


Perspective

by Sed



Category: Tron (Movies), Tron: Legacy (2010)
Genre: F/M, M/M, Multi, Sex Switch
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-06
Updated: 2014-03-28
Packaged: 2017-11-13 17:01:44
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 14
Words: 70,005
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/505743
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sed/pseuds/Sed
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Clu makes it into the portal with Sam and Quorra, but comes out the other side a little differently than everyone expected.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I only listed some of the pairings, and even those are **potential** , rather than definite, so don't necessarily count on everything you see up there happening in the story. I'm really just having fun with this one. I'm also open to suggestions, but please keep them reasonable.
> 
> The first chapter is not explicit, but later chapters will be.

“But why did… _this_ happen?!” Clu shrieked. And man, he really _shrieked._ Sam leaned away out of instinct, less because he was standing next to the man who had ruined his life, and more because he was standing next to, well, the _woman_ who had ruined his life.  
  
“I don’t know, but if you shut up for five seconds, maybe we can figure it out, alright? You’re not king of the Grid here, so keep a lid on it while the only guy who even knows where we are takes a second to think.” Sam had put himself between Clu and Quorra when they rematerialized in the arcade basement; a tough task, considering how fascinated Quorra was with the man on the other side of Sam.  
  
Clu shut up for a blessed minute or two, and in that time Sam decided it was worth the risk to turn his back and take a look at the console. Their reentry into the physical world left behind a trail of code a mile long, but he couldn’t immediately pick out whatever factor had configured Clu as a woman. The only thing Sam could imagine—which didn’t make any scientific sense that he knew of—was that it hadn’t known what to do with a basic program, and, recognizing Quorra as the next closest thing, simply copied her parameters when compiling Clu’s physical data.  
  
It was a sound theory, considering everything he knew about _everything_ was already up in the air that evening.  
  
“Well, okay. Here’s what I’m thinking. The laser isn’t built to make a human out of a program—you don’t have DNA.” Every word that left his mouth made Sam feel more and more ridiculous. “So it copied you… as an Iso. Sort of.” He shrugged. “It’s the next best thing.”  
  
Clu’s eyes snapped to Sam like a feral animal. “You’re an idiot,” he said.  
  
“Hey, screw you okay. I’m trying at least. Stand there and scream some more, that’s gonna solve this. Why don’t we just put you back in, take my dad out, and you can go back to being a lonely, angry asshole. Before I delete you, anyway.”  
  
Clu had been nodding at first, but when Sam started insulting him, and then once he mentioned _deleting him_ , suddenly all bets were off. “I’m not going back in, not with you out here.”  
  
“Great.” Sam dragged a hand through his hair and puffed out a long, frustrated sigh. There weren’t many options open that concluded in happy endings. He could send Quorra back in to get his father, hoping maybe the old man would know what to do, but there was still the matter of a Rectifier full of armed soldiers and light jets, and whatever else Clu had managed to stockpile in a few thousand cycles. He was sure his dad could deal with those, but tossing Quorra back into the middle of it all seemed unfair.  
  
“Alright,” he said suddenly, cutting his hands through the air to silence anyone before they spoke. “Here’s what we’re gonna do. I’m going to try to send a message to my dad, let him know we’re trying to figure out how to get him out and put you back in. Shut up, Clu, let me finish. If you _help me_ , I promise, on my word, on my _life_ , I won’t delete you. We’ll stick you in the computer and you can spend the rest of eternity making everyone play Ultimate Frisbee for your sick amusement. Deal?” He put out a hand, but Clu only sneered down at it.  
  
“I can’t trust you,” he said.  
  
“Well you don’t have much choice, do you? Besides, do you really think my dad is gonna let me delete you after he tried to pay you back for twenty years as a prisoner with a fucking hug? I thought you two were supposed to be buddies at some point. I mean,” he flipped a hand at Clu and shrugged. “Obviously that didn’t mean much to you, but at least _he_ took it seriously.”  
  
“Shut up. I don’t have to listen to you, or your disgusting Iso pet.”  
  
Quorra made an offended sound and leaned over Sam’s shoulder. “I never said anything!”  
  
“You just did!”  
  
“Both of you, seriously!” Sam snapped. He turned to Quorra and frowned. “Don’t bother answering him, alright? This is gonna take some patience.” Patience being something Sam possessed in short supply. He found it mildly amusing that he was the only one preaching it in that small, dusty room; apparently just a few short hours with his dad had rubbed off on him. “Can we agree on a truce, just until we get this figured out?” He turned back to Clu, waiting, and hoping, for a positive response.  
  
“Let me go back in,” Clu said. “You said you wouldn’t delete me—I’m holding you to that—I’ll send Flynn back out. You can keep this filthy world.”  
  
Sam didn’t bother mentioning that he had no way to actually force Sam to comply with the agreement, but he had sworn, and it seemed wrong to lie. For some reason he couldn’t even begin to comprehend, given the depth of Clu’s crimes. “Alright, let’s try—wait! I’m not putting the guy who kidnapped my dad back _in_ with my dad! Are you fuckin’ crazy?”  
  
“It was your idea. What if I give you my word?”  
  
“Yeah, that doesn’t work for you. Between the two of us, I’m the only one who hasn’t committed several thousand war crimes in the past twenty years. You’ll be staying out here with me. I’m not putting Quorra back in there, not without making sure Dad’s okay, and I’m not leaving her out here with you.”  
  
“I can probably take him,” Quorra offered. She received a glare from Clu in response.  
  
“No offense, Quorra, but I’m not so sure about that.” He nodded to Clu, taking a second to give him a once-over just because he could; apparently the laser had been liberal with its interpretation of the parameters set by Quorra’s body, if that was indeed the case. Clu was as tall as he had been, still undeniably muscular, but it was all tapered and smooth, like a swimmer. His suit had transitioned into an outfit similar to Quorra’s, only leather from head to toe, and a little more revealing on top than Sam was comfortable with.  
  
He was staring. The realization alone horrified him more than the initial shock of seeing Clu jump into the portal with them. “I can’t believe I just looked at those,” Sam muttered to himself. He put a hand over his eyes and tried to force the image of Clu’s unfairly generous cleavage out of his brain. “Fuck. _Fuck_.”  
  
“Looked at what?” Quorra asked. She peered over Sam’s shoulder at Clu, and Sam could feel her shrug against him. “He looks fine. For a complete monster.”  
  
“Abomination.”  
  
“Clu, give it a rest!”  
  
Clu’s jaw dropped and he crossed his arms. “I see. She makes a comment and it’s ignored, I make a comment and I’m told to be quiet. This is equality—this is the user promise. Servitude, with the Isos standing at your side and a step above the basics.” His voice rose in pitch and volume with each word, until he was shouting his distaste in Sam’s face.  
  
“If I thought I could get away with it, I would leave you here.”  
  
“Leave me like your father left? What a surprise. At least this time it’s all in your hands, instead of mine.”  
  
Sam didn’t answer that. He really didn’t want to touch that subject at all. He pointed Clu toward the couch and had him sit there, where he probably couldn’t get into trouble, and then got to work at the console. Quorra joined him after a few minutes, and together they did their best to compose and send a message. It seemed unlikely they would get a response either way, but Sam tried to stay positive; if the old man could successfully evade someone hell bent on destroying him, then he could handle an army of programs without a leader.  
  
“Hey,” Sam said, not turning away from the screen. “Will they even attack him without you there?”  
  
He could hear Clu shifting himself around on the couch, making small, disapproving sounds every time he touched another dust-covered section of blanket. “This is disgusting. And no, they won’t. Not with Jarvis derezzed and Rinzler at the bottom of the Sea of Simulation.” He chuckled quietly, and Sam did his best not to turn and hurl something heavy at him.  
  
It solved one problem, at least. By the time they got back in, his father would probably have the whole army converted back to normal programs. He’d turn the Rectifier into his own floating yacht, and fish Rinzler—Tron—out of the sea just to give himself some busy work.  
  
“I don’t mind going in alone,” Quorra offered once they were finished at the console. “I spent as much time evading Clu’s forces as Flynn, after all.”  
  
Sam shook his head before she even finished talking. He wasn’t going to risk undoing everything they had sacrificed to gain her freedom. He started to explain, but she put a hand up to stop him. “He did a lot for me, Sam. It’s the least I can do. Besides, Clu said it himself—they’re without a leader. With Rinzler gone—”  
  
“Right into the sea,” Clu mocked. He raised his hands and made a splashing motion, smiling at Sam, who had turned to glare at him.  
  
“—I won’t have any trouble with the sentries. The others wouldn’t have activated yet,” Quorra finished.  
  
It was tempting, and it did seem like an elegant solution to their biggest problem at that moment: securing Clu. Sam looked Quorra in the eye and frowned. “Only if you’re sure.”  
  
“I wouldn’t offer if I weren’t sure.”  
  
Sam scrubbed a hand over his mouth, letting out a deep breath as he looked around the office; she was right, and like it or not, she _was_ the most suited to jump back in and get to his father safely. She was a better fighter, and it was _her_ world, filled with programs she understood better than he could ever hope to. Sam could admit he’d only made it off the light cycle grid intact because of her intervention, and he probably would have been swarmed by blackguard in the club if she hadn’t risked herself to save him. Still, he felt like he owed it to his father to keep her safe, and putting her right back in the computer after they worked so hard to get her out seemed like a real kick in the teeth. Unfortunately it was the only option that made any sense, and she seemed confident about it. “Okay,” he said. “Okay. But I don’t like this. I’ll start the laser, you get ready for a fight just in case.”  
  
Quorra nodded. “I’ll find him.”  
  
“You two are so melodramatic.”  
  
“Shut up, Clu.” Sam leaned down over the console and started tapping in the same sequence he had accidentally started when he first stumbled into the basement. With a quick turn to ensure Quorra was in place, he reached for the button, only to find his finger blocked by a flashing text box.  
  
`[ENCOM SHV 20905… INITIALIZE SEQUENCE… AUTO ABORT /true/ CURRENT CAPACITY… .003% TO STARTUP -STANDBY-]`  
  
“The hell? Standby?” He tried to close the box, or just move it to the side, but it fixed itself over the key and wouldn’t budge. Trying to force it closed only resulted in an angry buzz from the console, and a second flashing window, ordering him to continue standing by.  
  
Clu scoffed. “Primitive.”  
  
“How long will it take?” Quorra asked. She moved next to Sam and peered down at the screen. “Can you tell?”  
  
Sam shook his head. “It doesn’t say.” The charge percentage it was displaying hadn’t changed since it popped up, either. “Could be a few hours, could be days.” Any longer and he was pretty sure they wouldn’t have to worry about babysitting Clu—one of them would probably just snap and kill him. Until that happened, though, he would have to keep an eye on him, and continue upholding his self-made promise to keep Quorra safe. That meant they couldn’t sit in the basement, waiting for a laser to power up.  
  
“Alright, everyone up,” Sam said. He fished his phone out of his pocket and started tapping away at the keys. “We’re gonna go for now. Hopefully Alan gets this message soon, because I’m sure as hell not driving that bike with both of you on the back.” He was pretty sure they wouldn’t fit. Of course, even if Alan did show up like Sam hoped, it would be stupid to leave Clu alone in a car with him. Which left only one other option…  
  
“Clu, you’re riding with me.”  
  
  
  
——————  
  
  
  
They fought for at least half an hour over who would drive the Ducati; Clu insisted, based on anecdotal evidence from the light cycle grid, that he was the better driver. Sam wound up shouting at him that he was a cheater, and a coward, and then they almost ended up trading punches out in the street. In front of Alan.  
  
Alan, who had then pulled Sam aside and asked if he was on drugs.  
  
“Where are we headed?” Alan asked after Sam finally convinced him that he was neither on drugs nor starting his own prostitution ring. Thankfully neither Quorra nor Clu understood what he meant by that, or it probably would have resulted in a violent murder—perpetrated by Clu _and_ Quorra.  
  
“I don’t know. I have one small pullout bed, and…” And he lived in a garage. Not exactly five star, and too small for two women and a scrappy hacker. Especially when one of the women had the ego of three. “The old house,” he said, realizing the genius of the idea even as he said it; it was a three bedroom with plenty of space, and no one living there. He’d kept it after his grandparents passed, mostly for sentimental reasons. “I’ll swing by my place and grab some clothes and Marv, if you can take Quorra to the house. I’ll explain everything there.”  
  
Alan nodded and leaned down to open the passenger door for Quorra. “We’ll see you there,” he said.  
  
Once they were gone, Sam turned to Clu, expecting round two of their battle for control of the bike. “We can do this all night,” he said. “Or you can get on, and we can get started figuring out how to fix this so everyone ends up happy.”  
  
Clu, arms still crossed, expression sour, looked from the bike to Sam and then back to the bike. He dropped his arms to his sides and sighed, holding out a hand for the helmet. “I don’t like this,” he said.  
  
“You and me both.”  
  
Sam sat himself on the bike, motioning Clu over and gesturing for him to sit on the back. That caused a momentary stir, and then Clu relented on that, too. He seemed to have had the wind knocked out of him by his unexpected transformation—or maybe it was the shock of suddenly existing in the physical world, away from everything he knew and understood, and beholden to Sam’s good will. Realizing that, Sam felt a tiny pang of guilt for him; tiny, and _brief._ “Hold on,” he said, kicking the bike started and peeling out so fast Clu had to scramble to get his arms around Sam’s waist.  
  
“There’s no stabilizer!” Clu shouted. “We’re sitting too high! This isn’t efficient or safe!”  
  
“Nah,” Sam yelled over the whipping wind. “I ride this thing all the time. We’ll be fine. Well,” he chuckled, “ _I’ll_ be fine.”  
  
“What do you mean?”  
  
“Just try not to bounce off the back if I hit a bump. Don’t worry though, we can probably put any parts you lose back on once you’re in the computer again.”  
  
“Slow down!”  
  
Sam ignored him. He was going to get every possible second of glorious torment out of the ride if he could help it. After fighting for his life all night, he damn sure intended to make Clu suffer a little. Yeah, it was petty. But so was using Sam as bait for his own father.  
  
The ride was silent after that, while Clu did his best to lower his profile and clamp his entire body around the bike and Sam. Once they left the highway and Sam slowed to a more reasonable (and legal) speed, Clu relaxed a little. “I might automatically return to my preset parameters when I reenter the system,” he said. He had snugged himself closer against Sam’s back, with his face so close Sam could feel the warmth of his breath against his neck, even through the cool night air. “I’m sure Flynn could fix me, even if I don’t.”  
  
“Maybe,” Sam replied. He was starting to regret not locking Clu in the arcade with a bag of chips and a bottle of water until they got things sorted out. “Stop talking for a bit,” he said. He needed to think, and that was impossible with Clu buzzing against him every time he spoke.  
  
He couldn’t even begin to guess how long it would take the laser to charge. That was a big problem; keeping Clu locked up in the house would probably take a lot more effort than shutting him up, especially if his curiosity won out over whatever resignation or fear had made him more compliant after their spat over the bike. He had given up twice since then, and yes, Sam _was_ keeping score, but he knew better than to count on luck holding out while he needed it. It was just as likely Clu was biding his time, luring Sam into a false sense of security while he waited for the right moment to strike.  
  
Still, the body plastered against his back didn’t exactly seem to be plotting world domination at that moment.  
  
“We’re here,” Sam called back to Clu. He nodded to the converted garage he called home, coasting to a stop in front of the rolling door. It took a minute for Clu to unclamp himself, and then he hopped down, wobbling on his feet as he regained his sense of balance.  
  
“What is this place?” Clu asked, peering up at the building. The first light of the morning was starting to peek over the city behind them, casting a glare off what little silver remained behind the grime of neglect. “It looks like a repair facility.”  
  
“Ten points. Come on, we’ve got some stuff to pick up.” Sam took the helmet from Clu’s hands and hooked it over the handle of the bike, motioning for him to follow as he slipped under the half-opened rolling door.  
  
Marv barked a greeting from his dog bed, only getting up when he realized Sam had brought a visitor. He ran over and sniffed at Clu’s feet, circling him curiously. His little stub of a tail flicked back and forth as he explored the newcomer to his territory. Clu froze in place and watched him.  
  
“Oh, don’t mind him,” Sam said. “He’s just curious. That’s Marv—my dog.” He neglected to mention that the puppy-like curiosity and appeal for attention was Marv’s typical reaction to the women Sam occasionally brought home. He had to remind himself that Clu wasn’t a woman, no matter how much he looked like one. Apparently Marv couldn’t tell the difference. “Here.” He tossed an empty backpack at him. “Hold on to that.”  
  
“What are we here for?”  
  
“Some clothes, Marv’s food, my laptop,” Sam said as he ducked his head into the fridge. “I’d offer you a beer, but I don’t think you should be drinking just yet.”  
  
Clu ignored him. He had crouched down, and somehow coaxed Marv onto his back. “He enjoys being stroked,” he observed, scratching his fingers over the dog’s stomach.  
  
It took every ounce of self control Sam possessed to stop himself from making an inappropriate joke about that. “Yeah, he does,” he said instead. Then he added, “Most guys do,” and snickered to himself as he opened a beer and took a drink.  
  
“What?”  
  
“Nothing. Okay, put him in the bag. I don’t want to leave Q alone with Alan for very long if I can avoid it, and we’ve still got another stop to make. The less time he has to hear about this from anyone but me, the better.” He watched as Clu looked from the bag in his right hand to the dog at the end of his left. “What’s the problem?”  
  
“I don’t understand.”  
  
“It’s fine, he rides in there all the time. I gotta get him to the vet somehow, right? He’s used to it. Just open the zipper and—you know what, let me do it. You go get your helmet on, and wait for me on the bike. Don’t touch anything.” Beer still in hand, he pointed in warning at Clu, gesturing him out the door.  
  
Marv grunted in complaint as Sam scooped him up and dropped him in the backpack. After a quick look around Sam gave the place a nod, hooking the bag of Marv over one shoulder, with the provisions in his free hand. He tapped the button to lower the door as he passed, and the lights flickered out one by one behind him. “You’re gonna carry this,” he said, handing Clu the bag without the dog. “Hook those straps over your arms. Right. I’ll carry him.” He put the bag on over his arms, securing Marv against his chest.  
  
“It would be easier to compress all of this and carry it as a smaller file,” Clu said.  
  
Sam shrugged. “Can’t do that here. But I’ll trade inconvenience for a beer and a burger any day.”  
  
“A what?”  
  
“You’ll find out on the way to the house.” Sam kicked the bike started for the second time that night, and leaned onto one foot as he pulled the kickstand up with his other. Expecting another quick takeoff, Clu clamped his arms around Sam’s front, only to discover—after a disgruntled bark—that Marv and the bag blocked him from placing his hands where they had been before. So he went lower.  
  
It was quite possibly the most confusing moment in Sam’s entire life, including when he stepped out into another world and found himself chased down by a recognizer, thrust into a game of life or death, facing a man who looked exactly like his father twenty years younger, and then every single second after that. All at once. Had any other woman put their hands on his dick, he would have been ecstatic.  
  
But this wasn’t any other woman.  
  
“You’re, uh… you’re gonna have to move those,” Sam muttered. He cleared his throat and stared straight down at the gas gauge.  
  
“Why?”  
  
“Because they’re, um,” he stalled, trying to think of how to resolve the situation without sending Clu into a fit. “It’s uncomfortable for me.” That sounded pretty reasonable.  
  
Of course, Clu wasn’t exactly a reasonable person. “Your comfort is not as important as my safety. I need to secure myself.”  
  
Sam wasn’t about to mention the risk to their safety that accidentally manhandling his groin was going to cause. Instead he reached down and forcibly pulled Clu’s hands up higher on his chest. “There,” he said.  
  
“I was fine before.”  
  
“ _You_ were.”  
  
  
  
______________  
  
  
  
  
“What took you so long?” Alan asked. He was sitting on the couch opposite Quorra, who had curled up in an armchair with piles of books scattered around her on the floor, tucked between her body and the chair, and in her lap.  
  
“It’s hard to be quick when you have to explain every part of stopping for food,” Sam replied. “Did—what did you guys talk about on the way here?” he asked.  
  
“Well, I learned a bit about what ‘Flynn’ has supposedly been teaching Quorra here, which raises a lot of questions, not all related to your father’s supposed whereabouts. I also learned that Clu there is actually a man, but not human, or something—I don’t know if I remember all of it. I’m going home.” He stood and headed for the door, pulling his trench coat higher on his shoulders.  
  
“Wait, Alan, wait!” Sam lunged for Alan’s arm to keep him in the room. “I know this sounds crazy, just give me time to explain.”  
  
Alan shook his head. “I’m not sure you _can_ explain this, Sam. You’re hanging out with these women…” he looked behind him at Quorra, who was absorbed in a Shel Silverstein book. “All the skintight leather is very hip, I’m sure, but I can’t deal with this right now. I’ve been up since you paged me at six, and I’m tired. You can try to explain it all tomorrow—later today, actually.” He looked at his wristwatch and shrugged.  
  
“I’d like to see this user on the Grid,” Clu said. “It’s so much easier to catch someone who gives up at the first sign of trouble.”  
  
That hit a nerve in Alan, and he rounded on Clu. “Excuse me? And just who are you, young lady?”  
  
Not one to back down from a challenge any more than Alan, Clu stood up from where he’d been kneeling on the floor, petting Marv. “Who am I? I’m the administrator of the Grid, and Flynn’s superior proxy. I’m—”  
  
“No one,” Sam interjected, putting himself between Alan and Clu. He could almost feel the heat of Clu’s glare at his back. “You’re right, Alan. It’s not the time for this. Just keep an open mind for now, okay? Give me a call when you’re ready to hear the whole thing.” He glanced over his shoulder at Clu. “We’ll be here.”  
  
Alan nodded, giving Clu one more disapproving look. “Be careful, Sam,” he said. “I’ve seen you pull a lot of crazy stunts, but I never worried about the company you were keeping.”  
  
Clu tried to jump in again, but Sam turned and pulled him close, cupping a hand over his mouth. “Trust me, it’s not as bad as you think.” He smiled another goodbye to Alan, only releasing his hold on Clu once the door closed. “It’s _so_ much worse,” he sighed.  
  
“Don’t ever touch me again!” Clu spat, throwing Sam’s arm away from him. He turned in front of Sam and shoved his shoulder hard enough to force him back a step. “Take me back to the—the—”  
  
“Arcade?”  
  
“The arcade!”  
  
Sam rolled his eyes and pushed past Clu, ignoring his demand as he headed for the kitchen, scooping up the backpack full of supplies along the way. “There’s no other food here, but I’ll get some stuff when I wake up. If you get hungry, Q, there’ll be a couple burgers and some fries in the fridge.”  
  
“I’m fine,” Quorra replied, still glued to the book of children’s poetry.  
  
“I’m hungry,” Clu said.  
  
Sam leaned around the corner and looked at him. “Really? What’s it feel like?”  
  
“It’s…”  
  
“Yeah, didn’t think so. Your room’s upstairs, on the right. If you have to pee try to go in the toilet, because you’re cleaning up any messes you make. I’m pretty sure Quorra’s got it all nailed down already. I’m going to take a fucking nap, I think I earned it.” He disappeared around the corner once more, leaving Clu standing in the living room with nothing but Quorra, Marv, and silence.  
  
“What’s pee?”


	2. Chapter 2

For once in his life Sam was glad for his own stupid sentimentality; having a house ready and waiting for him and his unexpected guests was like some kind of uncanny miracle. He really would have preferred returning there for the first time in years with his father at his side, but knowing there was a chance was so much better than going home without any hope at all. Things were complicated, and it was a pretty good possibility they would get worse before they got better, but at least he felt in control for the first time in a while. That was something.  
  
He’d showered and changed into some clean clothes, even though the ones he had come out of the arcade wearing were still technically clean. It was the memory of watching them sliced off his body piece by piece and sucked into a trash chute, only to magically appear again when he rematerialized that left him feeling like something was crawling across his skin. He couldn’t even look at the jacket—his favorite—without feeling a creepy chill.  
  
Of course, Quorra hadn’t batted an eye over her sudden change of attire. Clu either, for that matter. As he dropped himself down face-first on the bed, a thought occurred to Sam: Clu and Quorra didn’t have anything else to wear besides what they had appeared in.  
  
“Shit,” he cursed into the pillow. He would have to give them some of his.  
  
After gathering a pair of boxers, one pair of briefs, and a couple of shirts, he made his way back out into the living room, where Quorra had moved on to a new book. From the looks of it the subject was much heavier than Silverstein. “Hey, you can change into these,” he said, setting the clothes on the coffee table. “I know you’re probably used to wearing the same thing all the time, but it’s probably a good idea if you wear something else whenever you go to bed.” If she ever went to bed.  
  
“Mm,” she replied, tapping her finger against her tongue and turning a page.  
  
“Alright, I’m gonna find Clu.”  
  
“He took your dog and went upstairs.”  
  
Sam nodded, patting the small pile of clothes one more time to emphasize their location before he turned and left to find Clu. He imagined finding him in the shower, trying to figure out how the curtain worked. He almost hoped that was all he found after leaving Clu to his own devices—in hindsight it wasn’t the wisest decision he had made in the past twelve hours.  
  
The sound of running water greeted him as he reached the top of the stairs, and Clu’s voice mingled with the jingle of a collar, piquing Sam’s curiosity and drawing it down paths he wasn’t sure he wanted to tread. Things were already strange enough. He stood in front of the guestroom door, trying to work up the nerve to venture inside and see what was going on. Something crashed against tile—it sounded like plastic—and Clu made another comment that he couldn’t quite hear. It sounded like he was laughing. That was somehow more disturbing than any other scenario Sam could imagine.  
  
“Hey, Clu?” he called, stepping into the room. He tossed the clothes on the bed and leaned back to glance in the bathroom; Marv was curled up on the rug, chewing on a black glove.  
  
Sam’s glove.  
  
“Damn it, I liked those,” Sam complained. He stepped over to the bathroom door and knocked to announce his presence. “Thanks for giving Marv my gloves,” he said. “I guess you figured out how the shower works?”  
  
“I’m not an idiot,” came the reply from the other side of the room. “I’m sure the idea of leaving me to struggle amused you, so I’m sorry to disappoint you with my adaptability and capacity for common sense.”  
  
“Whatever. Are you almost done?”  
  
“What makes you think that’s your business?” Clu asked. Sam could hear him moving around, splashing water as he stepped.  
  
“Because I brought you some—wait—how much water is in there with you?” The guest room had a floor-level shower stall, not a tub. He pushed the door open all the way and looked down at the floor; it was soaked from wall to wall, and a large puddle was slowly making its way toward the bedroom. “You’re getting water everywhere!”  
  
There was no response from Clu.  
  
“Do you hear me? Turn the water off!”  
  
“Leave me alone. That’s what users do, isn’t it? Go play with your Iso.”  
  
Something in his voice sounded off—besides the obvious—and Sam stepped into the room, careful to lift the cuffs of his pants so they didn’t drag through the small lake forming on the tiles. He could hear something that sounded like stretching plastic, or rubber grinding against itself, and that coupled with the deluge prompted him to throw propriety to the wind. Clu wasn’t really a woman anyway. He reached out and tore the curtain aside, laughing in shock at the ridiculous sight before him: Clu had three different bottles of shampoo in his hands, one of which was upside down, and he was fully clothed. He even had his shoes on.  
  
“Yeah, you’re no idiot,” Sam said. “You’re just showering in your clothes. In—” he put a hand under the water. “In freezing cold water. Nice common sense.”  
  
Clu looked down past the bottles and shrugged. “What’s the problem?” What was off about his voice was obvious, then; he was shivering.  
  
“Well, for starters, you’re gonna end up with hypothermia like that. You need some warm water mixed in there. Second, you’re not supposed to shower in your clothes. Especially not in leather. I think we’ll have to cut it off you now.” Sam paused and cleared his throat. “You can do that, though.”  
  
Like a child losing interest in a stack of letter blocks, Clu opened his arms and let the bottles crash to the tile at his feet, watching with detached interest as they crashed around him. He crossed his arms and hooked his fingers under the hem of the leather top, stopping just long enough to get a better grip before peeling it up and off his chest. Which, much to Sam’s dismay, was completely bare underneath. “How is that?” he asked, struggling to pull the ruined garment the rest of the way off; it tangled around his arms and hair, leaving Sam with an unobstructed view.  
  
“How’s wha— _oh_. Uh, here. Let me… let me help you.” He did his best to only look up above Clu’s neck, but that was no easy task. He had to step halfway into the shower just to reach him at all, and Clu didn’t make it any easier by stumbling around, growing more and more panicked with every second his arms were trapped. “Calm down,” Sam ordered. He reached out and grabbed Clu by the waist to stop him, noting against better judgment how soft and warm her skin was, despite the cold water. His skin—not hers. _His_.  
  
“Stand still a sec,” Sam said, reaching up to begin untangling the chaos that Clu had managed to create over his head. Trying to do so had the unfortunate side effect of forcing them both closer together, and that only made matters _so much worse_. Every time he tugged at the leather, it bumped Clu’s chest against his, and given the extreme cold of the water spraying over them both, that was just throwing fuel on an already uncomfortable fire.  
  
Sam was really starting to regret his choice to go wandering around the house without his own shirt on.  
  
With one final tug and a irritated yelp from Clu, the top came off. Sam’s inner voice was screaming at him to step away and leave the room, but he stood there, one hand still on Clu’s waist, the other holding his forearm, staring down at him as though he had only just met him, and they didn’t have a sordid, bitter gulf between them. The brush of taut nipples against his chest when Clu shuddered under the cold water only buried him deeper beneath the illusion that there were no consequences for standing there, looking at someone who had wrecked his life, contemplating everything he wanted to do to her.  
  
“Him,” he muttered to himself.  
  
“What?”  
  
Sam’s eyes widened and he practically threw himself backwards out of the shower. “Okay, I’m going. I’m going now. I… I’m going.” He bolted out of the bathroom, unconcerned with the water that had reached the bedroom carpet and started to soak its way over the floor. He took the stairs two at a time—four in one case—dashing into his room and slamming the door like he could shut out the entire world if he tried hard enough.  
  
Speaking of hard enough, the cold water had done nothing to help him there. He stripped off his soaked pants and tossed them aside before reaching for the backpack to dig out a new pair. After a second’s hesitation he grabbed a shirt, too. He was still cold, and the last thing he needed was anything that reminded him of peaked nipples pressed against his chest, and warm, soft skin shivering under his hands. All he wanted to do was march back upstairs, drag Clu out of the shower and into the bedroom, and warm them _both_ up. He closed his eyes and thought of soft, toned curves, wet black leather, and the sight of water rolling over skin. A moment later he had his cock in his hand, squeezing it tight and pumping his fist up and down the shaft slowly. He closed his eyes and let out a deep breath, licking his lower lip as his body warmed under his own touch and the thrum of pleasure overtook his pounding heartbeat.  
  
He’d always felt a slight pang of guilt after coming; probably something instilled in him from all those times his grandmother dragged him to church in a pointless effort to make him behave. It was nothing compared to what he felt looking down at his hand, seeing the mess he had made all over himself, and realizing he’d thought of Clu’s new body the whole time.  
  
“Kill me now,” he muttered, throwing himself down sideways on the bed. He reached for a tissue on the bedside stand to clean himself up, but his hand fell short before he could grab it. Instead he hauled himself up and trudged into the bathroom to run his hands under warm water. As he passed the dresser, a clock on the wall beamed the time in bright green numbers.  
  
It was only noon.  
  
  
  
_____________  
  
  
  
  
“Can I leave you here, or are you going to try to perfect the house and annex the neighbors?”  
  
“I won’t even answer that. What do you expect me to do?” Clu asked. He had his arms and legs crossed, sitting on the couch like he had been sent to time out. The leather he had come out of the system wearing was completely gone, replaced by the boxers and oversized T-shirt Sam had loaned him. Neither fit, and both had a tendency to ride down whenever he moved. It made Sam’s own clothes feel uncomfortably tight and warm every time he noticed it.  
  
Quorra had passed out some time around four in the afternoon, and Sam eventually found her sleeping under a pile of books twice the size it had been when he left her. He carried her up to his grandparents’ old room and set her on the bed, deciding to leave changing up to her; he was sure she could survive a nap in street clothes. Of course, Clu hadn’t slept yet, and Sam wasn’t sure if or when he would. He kept hoping the bastard would nod off on the couch so he could sneak out and check the progress of the laser.  
  
“I don’t know,” Sam said. “But I’m not putting anything past you. I mean you managed to use up every towel in the house in under an hour, so I’m thinking you can cause a lot of trouble if you put your mind to it.”  
  
“Then take me with you. I want to see more of the user world anyway.”  
  
“Oh no,” Sam said, shaking his head. “No way. The less you know of all this, the better. I knew this would be a problem—you’re going back in the system as soon as the laser is charged, and you’re _not_ coming back out.” He crossed his own arms then in an attempt to look stern and maybe project some kind of authority. “You’re not even dressed.”  
  
Clu looked down at his shirt, plucking at the loose fabric and letting it flutter back down against his skin. “I’m wearing clothes.”  
  
“No, you’re wearing my underwear.” Man, _that_ was not something he needed to think about. “Normal people don’t go out like that. You’d get arrested.”  
  
“I’d like to see them try.”  
  
“Clu, no. You’re not coming. End of discussion.”  
  
  
  
______________  
  
  
  
  
“It’s very bright out here,” Clu said against Sam’s back. He had ducked his head down to avoid the bright afternoon sunlight filtering through the trees above. “I don’t like it.”  
  
“You could have stayed at the house, like I told you to,” Sam replied. “Your own fault you don’t listen.” He took a turn a little too fast, and Clu’s arms tightened around his chest. He wanted to enjoy it, but that same nagging voice slapped the thought out of his head before it could take root. _This is Clu, for fuck’s sake. Remember?_  
  
At least Clu had agreed to change his clothes. Sam loaned him a pair of jeans, and though they didn’t quite fit, it was still better than cotton boxers. The leather top had been salvaged and put back to work, as well as the boots. Clu complained at first that they were damp, until Sam reminded him that it was his own damn fault for having too much pride to ask anyone how the shower worked.  
  
Alan was waiting for them when they reached the arcade. After a difficult phone call Sam had managed to make him agree to a sit down, provided it came with a thorough explanation. He had planned to do so anyway, but something in Alan’s tone told him there wouldn’t be any opportunity for omission; details would be the only way to convince him that everything Sam told him wasn’t just the product of a night of bad drinking. It would have been easier without Clu trailing along, but there was nothing that could be done about that, apparently.  
  
“Hey,” Sam said, nodding to Alan as he turned off the bike.  
  
Clu hopped off backwards and strode past both men, right up to the chained doors of the arcade. He pulled the handles a few times, kicking the bottom of one door when they refused to open for him. “This is broken,” he complained.  
  
“You couldn’t have left her at the house?” Alan muttered under his breath.  
  
“I’m not a pet, Alan-one,” Clu said.  
  
“How the hell does she know—how do you know that name?” Alan demanded, whirling away from Sam. “Who told you that?”  
  
Sam found himself scrambling to intervene yet again, putting himself between Alan and Clu to stop an argument before it could start. “Wait, let’s start from the beginning, alright?” He fished the arcade keys out of his pocket, tossing them to Clu. “Open it up and go find someplace to sit inside. Don’t touch anything.”  
  
“ _Don’t touch anything_ ,” Clu mimicked, making himself sound as ridiculous as possible. “I’m touching the floor. Can I touch the floor?” He jammed the key into the lock and nearly ripped the chain from the handles, tossing it behind him as he disappeared inside.  
  
Once Clu was gone, Sam took a deep breath and looked Alan in the eye. “I need you to keep a really open mind, or this is gonna be a waste of time.”  
  
“I’ll try my best,” Alan said, though his expression remained skeptical.  
  
Over the next hour, with a short break to let Clu try a few of the arcade machines (all of which he quit in a rage, declaring that they were ‘broken’), Sam explained the Grid, the bitter history between his father and Clu, and the life-or-death adventure the three of them had experienced after Sam’s accidental trip to the other side. Alan seemed doubtful at first, but the more Sam elaborated, the more details he offered, and the more he talked about his father, the more it seemed his reservations were giving way to his curiosity and desire to believe. When Sam finished Alan let out a long, slow breath, as though he’d been holding it the whole time.  
  
“So it’s all real?” he asked, for probably the tenth time in as many minutes. “And he’s really alive?”  
  
“Yeah, all of it.” Sam shook his head, scratching at the back of his neck and chuckling to himself. “It’s a good thing you sent me, instead of going yourself.”  
  
“I would have Flynn right now if he had,” Clu added.  
  
Alan’s mouth flattened into a line and his eyes narrowed as he turned to look at Clu. “And she— _he_ , is responsible for all of it? For twenty years of Kevin trapped in a computer? Why is… I mean, Sam, why is he _here?_ ” He slapped his palms down on his knees and stared at Sam in disbelief. “Why is your father still in there?”  
  
“It’s the laser. You know, ‘Lora’s baby’? It took a lot to bring the three of us out, so I guess it needs to recharge before it will let anyone else back in—or out. Until then we’re stuck like this.”  
  
That didn’t seem to be a satisfactory answer for Alan’s question. He stood up and started pacing the floor of the small office apartment. “He’s not a guest, Sam. He took your father from us, from _all_ of us. The whole world has been looking for Kevin Flynn for twenty years, and this… _thing_ is responsible.” For a moment Sam was worried Alan would attack Clu; his shoulders tightened and he tensed like he wanted to hit something, but then he relaxed and continued pacing, shaking his head as though he simply couldn’t understand the mere presence of the program that had been at the center of so much tragedy. The program who was, at that moment, sorting a stack of notes by size, and setting them in a semicircle around himself on the floor.  
  
“I didn’t choose to become trapped here, like this,” Clu said. Sam thought he detected a defensive lift to his voice. “Blame the architect of your machine for that.”  
  
“Okay, let’s not get started with this again.” Sam put his hands up to stop them both. “Alan, I know you don’t understand, but I’m doing this for Dad. Just like Quorra. I know this is what he would want.” He hadn’t mentioned his father’s final attempt at reconciliation with Clu, ending in a swift kick halfway to the other end of the bridge and an extremely one-sided fist fight that Sam instantly regretted starting. That part could stay out of the story.  
  
Alan turned to look at him. “And Quorra, she’s the last of these new life forms? These… _Isos?_ ”  
  
Sam nodded. “Dad kept her safe, just in case there was a chance to get her out of there.”  
  
“I wish I’d known that a thousand cycles ago,” Clu said.  
  
There was a moment of uncomfortable silence, and it seemed at first that no one was willing to break it, until Alan shook his head and chuckled bitterly. “I won’t lie and say I agree with your choices,” he began, gesturing to Clu’s back. “Especially the decision to keep this one around.”  
  
Clu frowned and turned back to the papers, pushing one stack together more neatly, and changing its angle to match the pile next to it. Sam thought he heard him mutter something about Tron under his breath.  
  
Alan continued, “But I understand you’re doing what you think is best. I’ll help however I can, especially if it means getting Kevin back, and making things right.” He paused and shrugged. “So what now?” He sat himself on the edge of the couch and waited, and in that moment Sam realized Clu had been right; it really was all in his hands.  
  
“I guess… we keep improvising,” Sam answered. “One day at a time until the laser is finished.” Earlier, during Sam’s telling of the events on the Grid, they had wandered downstairs while Clu played _Space Paranoids_ in the lobby and attempted to beat the machine into submission. The progress indicator had barely moved, and after a few minutes of cell phone math and Alan’s calculations scrawled in the dust, they figured it had at least another two and a half weeks to go before the charge would be complete. Maybe more.  
  
Sam wondered to himself then if Clu had ever known that his user could only come back so often, even when his real-world obligations didn’t prevent him from doing so. Would that have been enough to stem his bitterness over the Isos, before it turned into the mess that ruined everything?  
  
No, probably not. And even if it were possible, they were long past the point where it mattered.  
  
He stood and leaned over to tap Clu on the shoulder, holding his hand out for the keys. “Anyway, I need to ask you a favor,” he said to Alan.  
  
“What’s that?”  
  
“I need to borrow your car.”  
  
  
  
_____________  
  
  
  
Once he knew the secret about Sam’s house guests, Alan was much more relaxed and friendly around Quorra; less so with Clu. In fact, he seemed to treat him worse. Sam was mildly amused by it, even if it meant he had to occasionally jump in and stop them from killing each other. Only once had it actually gotten so bad that Sam had to put a brief moratorium on the squabbling. It was when Clu brought up Tron, and started comparing him to Alan, before alluding to things he had done to the program in order to turn him into Rinzler. _That_ got under Alan’s skin, and once Clu knew the power it gave him, the gloves _really_ came off. Sam and Quorra had to practically drag them apart to keep it from escalating further, and even then it took Alan calling a cab before Clu would stop yelling taunts at him from the top of the stairs.  
  
“I’m just saying, maybe you could stop being a complete asshole.”  
  
“Why don’t you tell _him_ that?” Clu asked petulantly. He and Quorra were at opposite ends of the kitchen table, while Sam was busy at the microwave, re-heating dinner. He still hadn’t gone shopping, but at least with Alan’s car that was actually an option. “Why do I have to be the one to back down?”  
  
Sam held up one finger. “For starters, you’re a terrible person.” He held up a second finger. “Also, nine times out of ten you’re the one _starting_ the fights. Alan has a temper, but it’s not easy to push him far enough to get him going—trust me, I know. You did it about a dozen times just today.” The microwave beeped, and Sam popped the door open, gingerly sliding the plate of lukewarm fast food out onto the counter. It didn’t look or smell nearly as appetizing as it had when he first bought it. Strangely, neither of the programs complained. “And finally, because he’s a user, and you’re a program. If nothing good comes out of this, I’m at least gonna make sure you remember that.”  
  
With a dramatic shove he slammed the microwave door shut, letting the sound end the discussion. Clu wasn’t going to learn a damn thing, but Sam wasn’t going to let that stop him from trying. His father’s creation or not, Alan was right; Clu was still the villain. A pretty face and a nice set of tits didn’t change that.  
  
No matter how much Sam found himself staring at them.  
  
“I’d like to go with you next time you go out,” Quorra said suddenly. “I’ve read most of the books in the house. Do you think we could get some more?”  
  
Sam nodded. “No problem, we’ll stop at a bookstore. Since we have the car I can drag little Castro along and not have to worry about him running off at a red light.”  
  
“Going to shackle me to the vehicle?” Clu sneered.  
  
“I might. Keep talking.”  
  
Quorra took a bite of her burger and chewed it for much longer than was necessary, before looking slightly ill, and finally swallowing it. “This is…”  
  
“Yeah, we should hit the store tomorrow.”  
  
That was going to be an ordeal; with the distraction of books removed, Quorra was insatiably curious, and even if he was sure he could keep her from touching everything, that wouldn’t stop her from asking questions. Clu, on the other hand, would either take off and start wrecking the store, or demand a full history of every single item he saw. Worse, Sam knew he needed to get them some clothes. The prospect of a day spent shopping with two programs—one good, one pretty damn evil—was almost as daunting as the idea of making another trip onto the Grid. Frankly, he wasn’t looking forward to either.  
  
“Okay,” he said, leaning back against the kitchen counter. “I think it’s time for bed. _All_ of us.” He made sure to look directly at Clu when he said it, preparing for a fight. “And please, no more showers.”  
  
Clu looked up from a handful of soggy fries. “How often do users douse themselves?” he asked.  
  
Sam tried to hide a yawn behind the back of his hand. “I think in your case once a day is fine. Especially if I have to do a load of towels every time. Anyway, I’m goin’ to bed, try not to set the house on fire. Just don’t—”  
  
“Don’t touch anything,” Clu finished for him. “You’re as repetitive as a bit.”  
  
Sam didn’t bother answering. He rolled his eyes and pushed off from the counter, letting the momentum carry him through the doorway and into the living room; exhausted didn’t begin to describe how he felt. It was almost enough to push aside his concerns about leaving Clu to his own devices again. He was pretty confident that Quorra would stop Clu from killing them all, whether accidentally or by design, but the nagging unease was still there. He’d already had to give them both a lecture on eating or drinking anything that didn’t come out of the refrigerator after Clu tried to drink a bottle of bright green glass cleaner, thinking it was energy. He had to be allowed to smell it before he stopped insisting that it would help him stay awake.  
  
They just had to make it through three weeks. Three weeks, and they could trade his father for Clu, leave the system behind, and get on with their lives. Of course, he knew that wasn’t going to happen, not so easily. After twenty years on the Grid, Kevin Flynn wasn’t just going to bounce back overnight and become the technological visionary he had been—if he ever even touched a computer again. And if he did decide to pick up where he left off? Encom wasn’t really his company anymore, in spirit or on paper. Sam would have to take it back, and he would have to reinstate Alan as chairman. That process had to be started before his father set foot off the Grid. Sam was perfectly content to play cat and mouse games with the company, knowing they had zero interest in upholding his father’s ideals, but it would crush his dad to see what they’d become.  
  
At least Alan would be happy to hear he was finally stepping up.  
  
Sam barely noticed that he had hit the edge of the bed until he was falling onto the mattress. With a satisfied grunt he flopped against the pillow, burying his face in the fabric and rolling onto his side. His nap earlier that day hadn’t been nearly enough, not after everything he’d been through on the Grid. He didn’t have a single scratch to show for it all, but he could almost _feel_ the bite of Rinzler’s disc, and the painful itch where it had cut through muscle and flesh. No matter how many times he checked, the skin on his arm was just as it had been before he went to the arcade. Of course, his back was another story; those injuries hadn’t carried over onto the Grid, but they returned with a vengeance once he was back out.  
  
He drifted off some time during the personal catalogue of his injuries—digital and painfully real. It felt like hours had passed before he woke up, blinking in the dark and trying to see with the little illumination offered by the street lights outside. He could have sworn someone was in the room with him, but when his eyes finally adjusted to the darkness, no one was there. He mumbled a complaint and turned over, only to find himself face-to-face with Clu.  
  
In that split-second of recognition, a dozen possibilities flashed through Sam’s mind; that Clu was there to kill him being chief among those, but a rational thought hammered its way to the front somehow, and Sam stopped short of launching himself backwards out of the bed. Clu was asleep. His eyes were closed, and his shoulder was rising and falling rhythmically, timed perfectly to each little puff of air Sam could feel against his arm. His body immediately changed its response from panic to arousal, and Sam couldn’t help but take a look at the body stretched out alongside his. Back in the boxers and T-shirt, which were trying no harder than before to actually stay in place on his body, Clu looked like something out of an R rated fantasy. In fact, Sam was pretty sure in his youth he’d made several secret wishes to wake up with a hot girl in his bed—he just obviously hadn’t been thinking of _this one_.  
  
“Clu?” he said quietly, hovering his hand over her shoulder. _Her_ shoulder. Her perfect ass peeking out of a pair of boxers that were too large to keep anything covered. It was a nightmare, and it was incredibly tempting, and it was also the worst hard-on he had ever experienced in his entire life. It was like one cruel, extended joke was being played at his expense. He turned away, determined to go back to sleep and ignore the insistent, throbbing erection that pretty much guaranteed that was a wasted effort. Why couldn’t it have been Quorra? _Why couldn’t it have been Quorra in his bed?_  
  
Unfortunately that only managed to remind him that she had practically been raised by his father, which was somehow _more_ disturbing than Clu, who started out _looking_ like him.  
  
Of course, he didn’t look like him anymore.  
  
Holding his breath, Sam turned his head to look over his shoulder at Clu; still asleep, face covered in a cascade of light brown hair. He rolled over again and pushed the hair back, tucking it out of the way.  
  
Clu chose that moment to wake up.  
  
“What are you doing?” he asked, slurring the words through a haze of sleep.  
  
“Me? What are _you_ doing?” Sam demanded in return. He was embarrassed to be caught doing something that wasn’t even inappropriate, when he’d definitely been thinking of way worse things. “Why are you in my bed?”  
  
Clu pushed himself up further on the mattress, flopping his head down on the second pillow. “I don’t like being alone,” he muttered. “I’ve never been alone.”  
  
“What are you talking about? You’re always bitching my dad left you.”  
  
The move had pushed the shirt further down, revealing shoulder and just enough breast to make Sam feel lightheaded when he _accidentally_ let his eyes wander. “No,” Clu said. “I was connected.”  
  
Sam shook his head, totally confused by what seemed to be nonsense. “Connected? What do y—are you asleep again?”  
  
The answer was yes; Sam watched for a minute as Clu tossed and turned, finally settling on his back, which was probably the only thing that could have made matters worse.  
  
“This is ridiculous.” Sam slid out of the bed and planted his feet on the floor, reaching for a tissue in the darkness. “I’ll be in the bathroom,” he muttered bitterly, knowing Clu couldn’t hear him, and wouldn’t understand anyway.  
  
A cruel joke. All of it.


	3. Chapter 3

Sam felt the top of his head, poking around for the dent the wooden arm of the couch had left in his scalp. Logic told him it was only temporary; paranoia made him wonder if it would ever go away. He was strangely disappointed to find he couldn’t locate it anymore.  
  
“Each container has a different purpose,” he heard Quorra say from the kitchen. Both programs had woken long before he did, and it was their conversation about shower products that finally roused him from his extremely uncomfortable and restless slumber. Sam guessed they had been discussing shampoo and conditioner for at least fifteen minutes.  
  
“It would make more sense to combine them all,” Clu replied.  
  
Quorra scoffed, and Sam could hear the chair squeak as she leaned either forward or back. “You’re missing the point. It’s about ritual; the comfort of familiarity and procedure. You should be able to appreciate that.”  
  
“I hate this world.”  
  
“Then it’s a good thing you won’t be staying here long.”  
  
Sam decided that was his cue to get up and change the topic. He swung his legs off the couch and dragged himself up, sitting back and waiting for the world to right itself around him. Sleeping curled up on a thirty year old sofa was _not_ helping his back. Unfortunately he was sure that locking the door to keep Clu out would have just resulted in a broken door.  
  
“You guys have something to eat already?” he called over his shoulder.  
  
“There is nothing here. What do you think we ate, air?” Clu replied.  
  
Nodding his head, Sam reached back to drag his hand through his hair. He stood up and righted his clothes, dragging himself into the kitchen and flopping down in one of the empty chairs. It was like camping, only far less entertaining. “We’ll go get something,” he muttered. Another four hours of sleep in a real bed would have been perfect. “Hey, what were you talking about last night? About being connected?”  
  
Clu looked at Sam as though he’d said something unspeakable. “I didn’t say anything like that,” he said quietly.  
  
“Yeah, you did. Something about being alone. It was right after you invited yourself into my room and flopped down in my bed. By the way, thanks for that. I really needed to spend a night on the couch.”  
  
Clu’s eyes darted to Quorra, who was busy reading a cookbook she’d found in the cabinet. He seemed to relax a little when it was apparent she wasn’t paying attention. “Are we leaving?” he asked, clearly assuming he could change the topic without anyone taking notice.  
  
Sam wasn’t going to let him off the hook that easy. “Not until you tell me why you were in my room. And why _my_ room. I’m surprised you made it downstairs without breaking your neck.”  
  
“He tried my room first,” Quorra said quietly. She never looked up from the book. “I _encouraged_ him to leave.”  
  
Sam tilted his head and looked from Quorra to Clu, noting a fresh purple bruise on his upper arm that he hadn’t seen before. “Oh,” he said. “Maybe I should’ve tried that.” It would have been better than spending half an hour hating himself in the bathroom before stumbling out to the couch and half-sleeping through the second most uncomfortable night of his life.  
  
“Anyway, let’s go get something to eat, and then we need to stop by Encom. I’m gonna give some suits a heart attack today.” Both Quorra and Clu were already dressed. They were back in their original clothes; it seemed Clu was sick of wearing Sam’s pants. “Gimme a minute to change and we’ll go.”  
  
“Hurry up,” Clu snapped. “I’m in pain.”  
  
“It’s called being hungry, and you’ll get over it.”  
  
  
  
_____________  
  
  
  
  
Clu tilted his fork aside and looked down at the plate. His body was actually _growling_ at him; it sounded like Rinzler during a bad disc match, and the pain that accompanied the noises was almost unbearable. Still, he couldn’t imagine putting the formless blob of yellow and orange material in his mouth. The food he’d been forced to endure the night before was bad enough, but this new pile of unknown slop was just too much. He tilted the fork again, catching the light and shining the reflection in Sam’s eyes.  
  
“Stop that.”  
  
“I don’t want to eat this,” Clu said. “It’s disgusting. What did you say it was called?”  
  
“It’s an omelet, and you’ll eat it because I’m not buying anything else. Nothing in there is gonna hurt you.” He finished by shoveling a soggy, dripping square of food into his own mouth. Clu sneered in disgust and looked away.  
  
“What are _omelets_ made of?” he asked, staring out the window at the users wandering around outside. He turned back to his plate and frowned. It looked questionable.  
  
“That one’s just eggs and cheese.”  
  
“And where do those come from?”  
  
Sam dropped his fork dramatically and wiped the corners of his mouth with his fingers. “I’m not doing this,” he said, staring across the table in what Clu assumed was an attempt to be intimidating. “You’re only here for a few weeks, just accept some things and move on, alright? Eggs come from chickens, cheese comes from cows.”  
  
“What are chi—”  
  
“No.”  
  
The Iso, eager to please her user masters as usual, piped up then. “I like these pancakes, Sam. They’re delicious.” She took another bite and grinned like an idiot. Sam smiled back at her, and Clu resisted the urge to hurl his glass of milky orange liquid at both of them. He wanted it, anyway. It was the only halfway decent offering the serving user had brought them.  
  
The Iso was eating something Sam had called chocolate chip pancakes. They looked similar to what Sam was eating, only they had small brown spots scattered over the surface, and came coated in a white pile of fluff. Apparently users liked to waste time making things look attractive, only to then destroy them by grinding it all up in their mouths as soon as they were done. It sounded about right, given what he knew of Flynn.  
  
“Stop sulking and eat,” Sam said. He pushed at Clu’s plate with his own fork. “You’re acting like a kid.”  
  
“I’m not—” he was interrupted by another menacing growl from his midsection. With a resigned sigh he picked up his fork and lifted the edge of the omelet.  
  
“Cut it up into smaller pieces first.”  
  
“Why doesn’t it just _come that way?_ ” He tilted the edge of the fork and cut a triangle out of the whole, stabbing it with the tines and bringing it up to his mouth quickly, to get the experience over with as fast as possible. To his surprise, it actually tasted much better than the soggy mess he’d had before. Another bite to compare the results, and he found that yes, it was consistently appetizing.  
  
They ate in relative peace after that, except for the serving user who kept coming over to ask inanely about their wellbeing. Sam answered her every time, which was almost as annoying as the constant interruption. He should have told her to go away, but instead he smiled and acted like she was doing him a favor—then he stared at her backside while she walked away.  
  
When they were done, Sam pulled a black case out of his back pocket and flipped it in his hand. “Either of you have to use the bathroom?” he asked. “I’m gonna pay.”  
  
The Iso looked around at nothing for a moment, obviously trying to piece together whatever response she thought Sam wanted to hear. “Yes, I should,” she said.  
  
“It’s in the back.” Sam pointed to the opposite end of the room. “Mind taking him with you?”  
  
The Iso nodded and slid herself out of the booth. “Come on,” she said, and Clu stared at her incredulously for a moment before resigning himself to the inevitable (Sam would just make him go), and following her lead. He did have to use the bathroom. It was odd, and he didn’t like doing it if he could avoid it—Flynn had always talked about it, but Clu assumed he was exaggerating. Clearly not.  
  
“Don’t sit on the seat,” Sam said as they passed.  
  
Clu shrugged on the jacket Sam had loaned him and slapped his arms down at his sides. “Then why do you even _have_ seats?”  
  
“Just go.”  
  
  
  
_____________  
  
  
  
  
“Well, we can’t ever go back there again.” Sam turned the key in the ignition and let the car idle for a moment before pulling out of the space. “Thanks for that.”  
  
Clu shrugged. “There are other places to find food.”  
  
“Yeah, that’s not the point. From now on when I tell you to do something, try to actually listen.”  
  
“You are remarkably arrogant.”  
  
Sam actually laughed at that. “Really? Somehow, getting trapped on this side of the laser—even though that’s what you supposedly _wanted_ to begin with—has only managed to turn you into a bigger asshole, and you’re gonna call me arrogant. I’m actually amazed, Clu.” He tried not to let his anger affect his driving; Clu would probably call him on _that_ , too. “All you had to do was go to the bathroom with Quorra and come back.”  
  
“I wanted to understand the need for separate… facilities.”  
  
“You mean you wanted to peek in the men’s room. Yeah, that’s you. That’s the big bad program who ruled the Grid with an iron fist. You sneak into the men’s room and harass guys about their dicks.” Just thinking about it made him want to toss Clu out on the side of the highway. One man shouting, the manager practically turning red—the cute waitress wouldn’t even look at him after that, not that he thought he had a snowball’s chance with her anyway.  
  
“I did not harass him. I questioned. If users weren’t so sensitive—”  
  
“That’s a good one, coming from you.”  
  
“If users weren’t so sensitive, I would have just left after he answered my question.”  
  
Sam didn’t even care that he was in the middle of the road. He twisted around to look in the back, bracing his arm on the back of Quorra’s seat. “No man— _no_ man—is going to tell you why his dick is small. I can’t even—I can’t believe you even asked him that.” He turned back around, putting both hands firmly on the steering wheel and staring ahead, wishing he could just forget Clu was even there.  
  
There was silence from the back seat, and Sam braced himself for whatever question Clu was cooking up.  
  
“What exactly was wrong with what I asked him?”  
  
“Because,” Sam started, only to stop himself abruptly. He had to put it in terms a program would understand. “What’s something programs are really proud of?”  
  
“Power,” they both replied in unison.  
  
“Okay, say I went up to you on the Grid and asked you why you weren’t as strong or as fast as another program. How would you feel?”  
  
“Embarrassed,” Quorra said.  
  
“I would derez you,” Clu added.  
  
Sam nodded. “Alright, so do you understand? There are things users take very seriously.” He paused, figuring he should elaborate on that last part. “Even though they probably shouldn’t. You’re right, though, we’re sensitive. But so are programs if you mention the wrong subject.”  
  
He let that all sink in, enjoying the silence while they thought about what he’d said. For a brief, shining moment, he was a little proud of himself, thinking maybe he had actually imparted some kind of wisdom. His dad probably would have been proud.  
  
Then Clu, as usual, brought it all crashing down.  
  
“So how big is yours?”  
  
  
  
_____________  
  
  
  
  
When they arrived at Encom, Sam left them in the car, in an underground parking facility. He said he wouldn’t be gone long; that he just needed to talk to Alan and “shake up the board” –whatever that meant. His instructions for waiting were only to stay in the car and not talk to anyone. Of course, the first thing Clu did once Sam had gone was ignore that and get out. They all seemed to think he was going to rain destruction upon the user world simply by laying a hand on something he found interesting, and it was infuriating. He was unfamiliar with his surroundings, and constantly bombarded by concepts, objects, and sights he didn’t understand, but that didn’t mean he lacked the ability to navigate a mostly open space without leaving behind a trail of chaos.  
  
As he walked through the garage, he spotted a car that looked very much like something he would have expected to see on the grid; a sleek, black vehicle with dark windows and perfectly curved lines, descending into a tapered front. Its wide grille resembled a mouth, and the headlights were narrow, eye-like slits. He approached cautiously, having already set off a shrill alarm on another vehicle shortly after beginning his exploration.  
  
The black car was warm to the touch, and clean, like it had just been rezzed. He traced his fingertips over the arch of the hood, appreciating the smooth finish. A small, silver ornament resembling some kind of creature arched forward at the front, and Clu reached out to feel it. He ran a finger over the rounded curves, wondering what it had to do with conveying users from one point to another. Flynn had never put pointless symbols on objects he created; denotations, directional markers, yes. Those made sense. But tiny models of other creatures? Even Sam kept his incessant need to mark everything of his limited to a set of meaningless, curved white lines. They _were_ everywhere, though.  
  
“You probably shouldn’t touch that,” someone said over his shoulder. Clu spun around, and with a distressing snap the figure came dislodged from the vehicle. He looked down at his hand and frowned; Sam would never let him out of his sight again.  
  
“That’s why. Here,” the man extended a hand, “I’ll take it with me.”  
  
Clu looked from the silver figure to the open hand extended toward him. He wondered briefly if maybe Sam had a point, and he should have just stayed in the car. Then again, it _was_ Sam. When the man twitched his fingers, beckoning Clu to hand over the object, he shrugged and gave it to him.  
  
“Good.” The figure disappeared into a pocket, and the man extended his now free hand toward Clu once more. “I’m Ed.”  
  
It seemed like he was being asked to take the hand, and Clu realized it was yet another pointless ritual users engaged in for their own satisfaction. He offered his own, watching as it was shaken briefly, and then released. “Clu,” he said, looking over his hand as though something might have crawled onto it.  
  
“That’s an odd name for such a pretty girl,” Ed said. His words gave an impression of someone who was extremely bored. It reminded Clu of the way Jarvis had spoken to Sam. Like he couldn’t be bothered to care, but still made a show of trying.  
  
“Are you waiting for someone?”  
  
“Sam Flynn,” Clu answered, not particularly concerned about Sam’s insistence that he keep to himself. “He’s inside.”  
  
“I’m sure he is. I’m surprised he used the door this time. I would have thought he’d be more comfortable crawling in through a duct.” He bit off the end of the word, narrowing his eyes just a fraction.  
  
“You’re familiar with him?” Clu asked.  
  
Ed chuckled quietly. “We’ve met. So, you’re with Sam.” All pretense of manners dropped, his eyes shifted down in a way that made Clu want to take the silver figure back and cram it down his throat. He wasn’t sure why it bothered him, until Ed’s roving stare halted at his chest “Tell me,” he drawled, looking back up again. “Just what is it that everyone finds so interesting about Encom’s prodigal son?”  
  
“I don’t know what _everyone_ thinks,” Clu said, doing his best to mimic the user’s tone.  
  
“No, I suppose you don’t. Well then, it was nice meeting you, Clu. Please give Sam my regards—he’s helped make my work so much more interesting lately.” He treated Clu to another fake half-smile and turned, tossing a casual wave over his shoulder as he went.  
  
After watching Ed saunter off and disappear into the building, Clu turned back and started looking for Alan’s car. He was lost amidst a sea of silver and black vehicles. Occasionally he spotted one that was blue, and a single red one that stood out like a beacon, but he couldn’t recall seeing any of them on his way around the structure. He stopped in the center of an aisle and took a look around to orient himself. There was a logical way to solve the problem; he simply had to start at one corner and work his way through every aisle until he located the correct vehicle.  
  
“This,” he muttered to himself as he made his way over to the nearest corner, “is why we derez most vehicles when we’re not using them.” Users had no concept of utilizing space efficiently, no idea of the resources they could save by compressing data, and no ability to see beyond their immediate needs and pointless desires to make obvious improvements. Their world was beyond imperfect. There could be no correcting its flaws. He longed for the Grid, and simplicity, order; the connection he shared with the system itself that made him so much _better_ than he ever could be in the user world. It had been amusing, but he was already tired of the redundancies and pointless rituals—and Sam’s idea of leadership. There was nothing that he couldn’t replicate in infinitely better varieties on the Grid.  
  
By the time he located the car, with the Iso still waiting obediently inside, Clu had covered half the garage.  
  
“Has Sam returned yet?” he asked, leaning into the back door. He still wasn’t sure it mattered, but he didn’t want to listen to the inevitable lecture.  
  
“No,” she replied. She had located a picture, well-worn and folded in multiple places, covered in so many lines and symbols that Clu felt dizzy just looking at it.  
  
“What is that?”  
  
“It’s a map,” she said, then flipped it over to read something on the back. “ _The Center City Metropolitan Area_.”  
  
He reached for it, only to have it pulled away before his fingers could close around the corner. “That’s not a map,” he said. “It has too much data—let me see it.”  
  
“You can have it when I’m done.”  
  
“What are you guys doing?” Sam said. He was beside the car, keys in hand, with a stack of papers clutched under one arm. “Clu, why are you out of the car?”  
  
“I wanted some air,” Clu said, which wasn’t a total lie. He shot the Iso a warning glance, but she was still staring at what she claimed to be a map. “You took much longer than you said you would.”  
  
“Yeah, sorry about that. I had to run down to the archives.” He pulled the papers out from under his arm and waved them back and forth. “All the info I could find on the laser. I’m thinking we might be able to supplement the power somehow. Give it a boost and maybe skip the wait.”  
  
“How long will it take?”  
  
Sam shook his head and leaned down to toss the papers through the window. They scattered in a neat spray across most of the dashboard. “Maybe not three weeks, but long enough. Still need to get you guys some clothes in the meantime. Get in.”  
  
Clu hesitated a moment before sliding into the back seat. He glared at Sam as they pulled out of the space, contemplating just how to make him pay for the treatment he had forced Clu to endure since they left the Grid. There had to be some way to make him suffer without risking their agreement. He would find it.  
  
  
  
_____________  
  
  
  
  
The mall was busy for a Monday. Sam groaned inwardly as he led the programs in through the sliding doors—Clu muttered something on the way in, though Sam only caught the words _efficient_ and _surprise_. They entered through the food court, which probably wasn’t the best idea, given that it was near lunch time and the place was packed to the walls already. He quickly located the first available guide stand and started scanning for women’s clothing stores. Preferably one that would cater to odd women dressed in all black and mostly leather, and wouldn’t mind him hanging around the dressing rooms if he needed to.  
  
“Alright, we’re here.” He pointed to the red dot on the map indicating their place next to the food court. “We’re going _here_.” His finger drew an invisible path up through the numbered blocks and stopped at a small clothing boutique on the other end of the building, one floor up. “Let’s try to make this fast, okay? Pick out a couple shirts, some pants, shoes.” He had no idea what else women needed. “Underwear? I’m not helping you with that part, so don’t ask.” There was one more thing they would each need, or he was going to pay for it every minute his eyes were open. “You’re also gonna need… uh, ask the ladies at the dressing room about… bras.”  
  
“What are those?” Clu asked.  
  
“They’re for your—” Sam held his hands under his own chest and made a cupping motion. He could feel his face getting hotter by the second. “You know.”  
  
“Oh. Why do they require separate garments? Why not build them into the clothing?”  
  
“I don’t—Clu, just pick out some clothes, okay? Stop asking so many questions.” He left the map, motioning for them to follow.  
  
“Sam,” Quorra said. “Can I get a map?”  
  
“A world map, or something more specific?”  
  
She looked away, considering the question. “How many maps are available?”  
  
“A lot. It might be easier if I just bought you a geography program.” He realized the mistake the second the word left his mouth.  
  
Clu stopped dead, glaring daggers at Sam and curling his hands into fists. “Now you’re enslaving programs to the Iso? You are _worse_ than your father, Sam Flynn. You—”  
  
“Clu, calm down.” Sam made a soothing motion with his hands, though he wasn’t even sure Clu would notice. “It’s not that kind of program, okay?” He actually had no idea if that was true. For all he knew, every single computer was populated by a civilization of sentient programs, and he was actively engaging in the trade of lives every time he pirated software.  
  
“What kind of program is it, then?” Clu demanded. “Explain it to me.”  
  
“It’s a—I mean, it’s like a book.” That wouldn’t work. “I’m sure my dad can explain it so you’ll understand, but you’ll have to wait until we get him out. Can you just trust me for now?” He waited, watching Clu’s expression shift from rage, to something a little less immediately explosive, before finally settling on mild agitation.  
  
“But it’s not a program,” he said slowly.  
  
“No, it’s just called that.” Sam really, really hoped he was right. “So we’re good?”  
  
Clu nodded, and Sam relaxed a little. He felt like he was living in a minefield; if it wasn’t explosive anger, it was frustrating and confusing sexual tension. At least he was the only one aware of the latter, but that didn’t make it any easier to deal with. The thought reminded him of something. “Hey, try to get nice clothes. Not that yours aren’t… I mean, something that covers you.”  
  
“Like what?” Quorra asked. She suddenly broke off from the group and pressed herself to a nearby display window. “Oh, look at this!”  
  
“Q, that’s a pet store.”  
  
“I’d like to see these!” She stared down through the glass, and a trio of kittens inside stopped playing, gazing up at her like they expected something. “What are they?”  
  
“Kittens. Baby cats,” Sam said. “I guess you want to see them, right?” The pleading look from Quorra was the only answer he received. “Alright, come on around this way.” He took them inside, where Quorra once more did her very best to get as physically close to the kittens as possible.  
  
“We’d like to see a couple of the kittens,” he said to a passing employee. “Which ones, Quorra?”  
  
“All of them.”  
  
“Just pick two.”  
  
Clu leaned in next to her, staring intently at the cats. “The black one,” he said.  
  
“Okay, the black one, and…?”  
  
Quorra looked between the three in the window and the five others in individual cages along the wall. Her expression was approaching frantic. “That one. No. _That_ one.” She pointed to a bobtail calico in the corner, playing with a bit of fluff it had torn from its bed. “Please.”  
  
“Okay, the calico and the black one.” The employee nodded and headed off to retrieve the cats, pointing the three of them toward one of the booths along the opposite wall. Sam opened the waist-high door to let the others inside, but stayed out himself.  
  
“Be gentle with them,” he said. “They’re really delicate.” For a minute he worried that it was a bad idea to let them handle small animals, but Clu had been pretty good with Marv, and Quorra was needlessly careful with almost everything she touched.  
  
When the kittens were handed over, Quorra looked like she might explode. Her face lit up, and she immediately cuddled the tiny calico against her chest, stroking behind its ears and talking softly to it. Clu held his in one hand, with the other over its back, attempting to keep it in place. The kitten put up with that for all of thirty seconds before deciding it wanted to explore. After a few tense moments of kitten negotiation, it ended up in his lap, where it padded back and forth across his legs, mewling.  
  
“Pet it,” Sam said. “Like she’s doing.”  
  
Clu held his hands up, hovering over the kitten. He looked afraid to touch it again. “Will it listen to instructions?”  
  
“They don’t even listen when they’re grown. Cats kind of do whatever they want.”  
  
“And you keep them as pets, like Marv?” he asked.  
  
“More or less,” Sam answered. He leaned down on the door and watched the kitten in Quorra’s hands as it crawled up onto her shoulder. When he turned back to Clu, the black kitten was rolling around trying to attack his fingers. “It’s a little different, you can’t really walk a cat.”  
  
Clu watched the kitten roll off his thigh and land on the seat next to him, before immediately crawling back up. “You provide them with food, shelter, and affection, and in return they do whatever they want?”  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
“I admire their cunning.”  
  
Sam rolled his eyes. “I bet you do.”  
  
The calico made its way down Quorra’s arm, slowly clawing along the sleeve of her jacket until it reached the bench. Clu’s kitten had decided it wanted to chew on his top, having caught the hem between its teeth. It was a strangely endearing and surreal moment to spend with the two of them; Clu was smiling, obviously pleased by the playfully aggressive nature of his kitten, and Quorra looked so happy she was almost vibrating.  
  
“Okay, time to give the kittens back.” Sam waved down the girl who had helped them earlier. “We’re done,” he said when she came over.  
  
“I want to keep this,” Clu said.  
  
Quorra looked up with an expression that told Sam she was in complete agreement.  
  
“Guys, no. We’ve already got a dog, and—Clu, you’re not even _staying_. What are you gonna do, bring a kitten on the Grid with you?”  
  
“Who are you to tell me I can’t?”  
  
Sam pulled out his wallet and tapped it on the top of the door. “I’m the guy with the money. So the answer is no. Q, stop looking at me like that.”  
  
It was like watching kids leave their parents for the first time when the girl came around to take the kittens. Clu tried to hold his out of reach, but eventually he gave in and handed it over. Quorra leaned around the wall and watched the calico the whole way back. For their part, neither of the kittens seemed to feel the loss as much as the two programs. They went right back to tumbling around and clawing at anything their little paws could reach.  
  
The three of them left the pet store after that, and Sam silently prayed they didn’t pass anything else the programs found interesting between there and their destination. He had to drag Clu away from a kiosk once when an overzealous salesman started shoving products in his face. It was more for the safety of the salesman than for Clu’s sake. They made it from there to the escalator without any further incidents, and Clu remarked on the efficiency of moving stairs, before noting that he also appreciated the potential danger, saying that it would forcibly cull less intelligent users. It wouldn’t have been a problem if he hadn’t said it while staring at a small child.  
  
When they finally reached the clothing store, Sam gave them their freedom on the condition that they didn’t leave. “Remember,” he said, “just basic stuff. And try to keep it classy.”  
  
He watched them at first, wondering whether or not they would actually listen. After a while of observing as they meandered first together, then separately around the small store, Sam located a chair in the shoe section and deposited himself there. He occupied himself with the papers he’d copied from Encom’s archives. The diagram of the laser didn’t hold any surprises, but when he started reading up on the power supply, his hopes of speeding up the process shattered like a program; the whole thing was originally designed as part of a much larger, and much more complex structure. He couldn’t even figure out how his father had dragged it into the basement and hooked it up to the arcade’s junction box without blowing power on the whole block. On top of that, it seemed the recharge period wasn’t based on the actual energy utilized to operate the laser, but rather the mass conversion process. Once it was charged, they would be able to send any number of people in, but bringing someone out would trigger a cool down again. That meant even if they did send Quorra in to get his father, once she brought him back out, they were stuck with Clu for at least another week.  
  
He was halfway through the stack when Quorra found him. “What’s up?” he asked, shuffling the papers back together. His eyes burned from staring at the pages for so long.  
  
“I think I’m done,” she said. She held up the small pile of clothes gathered in her arms.  
  
Sam stood up and reached for his wallet. His back right pocket—where he always kept it—was empty. He started searching his other pockets, his jacket, the floor around him, but it was nowhere to be found. “I must’ve dropped it somewhere in the mall. You guys wait here while I—” Looking out over the tops of the clothing racks, he realized one of their party was missing. “Where’s Clu?”


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you've been wondering why my descriptions seem to set Clu at a younger age than he appeared as a man, this chapter will (hopefully) clear that up for you.

“Nick from security said Mackey spent the whole weekend on the phone in his office, screaming at the head of human resources. Called him on vacation. Like he can just get rid of Flynn by firing him or something.”  
  
Ed listened to his coworkers gossip about Sam Flynn’s latest “prank” on the company, only half-interested, but unable to tune them out without some other distraction in the small break room. The reactions he’d overheard so far were split fifty-fifty, it seemed; some thought of Flynn as a champion of the old Encom—of course, most of those were employees who had been around long enough to actually remember it. Others worried that he was jeopardizing the company’s interests, and in turn their jobs. In a way they were all right. Unfortunately for the first group, it was a dead cause Flynn had chosen to champion.  
  
“He was at it earlier, too. I passed one of the meeting rooms on my way to lunch, and I caught him yelling at some poor bastard about his car. Something about it being vandalized. I think security’s gonna see some cutbacks if they don’t step up.”  
  
Ed thought of the hood ornament in his pocket. He would have to toss that out later. With the OS12 incident still looming overhead like a black cloud, the last thing he needed was to throw his lot in with Flynn and his groupies.  
  
Flynn’s taste in women was as strange as his lifestyle. There had definitely been something odd about the girl in the garage.  
  
“That reminds me, you should’ve seen them when Flynn came by earlier. Pretty sure some of them were ready to kill him.”  
  
“I wouldn’t blame them. The guy’s a lunatic. What was he here for, anyway?”  
  
With his coffee cup to his lips, Ed paused, waiting to hear the other employee’s reply. He was only vaguely concerned with what little interest Flynn had in the company beyond his ability to troll its executive staff. However, an unprompted visit during work hours was something quite unusual.  
  
“No idea. I’m sure he stopped by Bradley’s office, but someone said he was down in the archives for a while, too.”  
  
“Isn’t that all on the company server?”  
  
“No, not the old stuff. Hasn’t been converted yet.”  
  
“That’s weird.”  
  
It was definitely _weird_. When he took the company, Kevin Flynn had insisted on making a full switch to digital archiving. Only a small handful of the projects Encom was running at the time had been sustained through the takeover, and those remained on hard copy out of necessity—to be converted once they were completed or canceled. Of those, the only one Ed knew of that had anything to do with Flynn himself was the system monitoring program Alan Bradley had been working on. The copyright for that program and the game Kevin Flynn eventually based on Bradley’s work and likeness were firmly in Sam Flynn’s sphere of control, though. Unless he was down there to reminisce, there was nothing he could gain by digging through the archives for those files.  
  
Which meant he was after something else.  
  
  
  
_____________  
  
  
  
“Would you like to try a sample?”  
  
Clu looked at the tray of brown and white squares held out before him. “No.”  
  
He had been walking for a while, with no sign of the pet shop. His feet hurt, and the realization that he was experiencing pain in his feet bothered him more than the actual pain itself. By the time he found a place to sit he had lost interest in the kitten entirely. At that point he was more interested in finding something to eat; a much simpler task with Sam’s money. He only had to determine what that was.  
  
Inside the case he’d taken from Sam’s back pocket, Clu found a number of strange objects. Fifteen long, white papers totaling sums for purposes he couldn’t place; four small squares of paper printed with names and numbers he didn’t understand, a picture of his father, which Clu took for himself (it had been _his_ face too at one point); eight wide, green pieces of paper with men’s faces and different numbers on them ranging from one to fifty; a flat, round piece of metal with another face, shoved into one corner; and three pieces of plastic printed with Sam’s name and a series of numbers. One said _Debit Card_ , and Clu was almost certain it had been the one he’d used to pay for their meal at the restaurant that morning.  
  
The only logical conclusion could be that it was therefore _money_.  
  
He knew how to find his own sustenance. That wasn’t a problem. The Grid had bars, clubs, restaurants; Flynn had crammed so many different forms of entertainment into the system that it had eventually become impossible to sustain them all. Clu was forced to shut down those that drew fewer patrons, and repurpose the many serving programs who had little use elsewhere, and only ate up resources while they stood around waiting to be useful. Apparently that was one of the many things that made him a monster, according to dissenting propaganda. Unfortunately, despite actually having experience he could relate to the user’s world for once, it seemed that corresponding user establishments did not operate on a standard system, as they did on the Grid. At the restaurant that morning they had been served as expected, but users in the mall lined up for their food, and were served straight from the dispensaries. He couldn’t decide which method was more efficient. He also had no idea how it worked.  
  
Sam had warned Clu and the Iso away from foods they might not be able to handle, whatever that meant. He threw so many names at them that eventually Clu just started tuning them out, nodding like an idiot and pretending to take a mental inventory of things like _peppers_ , and _fish_.  
  
His stomach was growling again.  
  
“You know, you’ll actually gain weight if you don’t eat.”  
  
Clu lifted his head and looked around for the source of the voice. He was already tired of users inviting themselves into conversation with him. He turned to find a group of medium-sized users staring his way, each one nearly identical in dress and superficial appearance. They varied in skin tone and facial structure, but were otherwise eerily similar. “What are you talking about?” he demanded.  
  
“We can hear you from over here. You should eat something.” One of the users—she had a necklace around her throat that read _Amanda_ —moved her chair closer to his. “Magazines are always like ‘don’t eat carbs, don’t eat sugar!’ but you know, if you don’t eat then your body thinks you’re starving so it holds on to everything.”  
  
He could only stare at the user, wondering what she was talking about. The other five copies nodded along as she spoke, making various noises indicating their approval.   
  
“And,” one of them added, “you can actually find really good stuff, even at fast food places sometimes.”  
  
“Like Subway.”  
  
“Subway isn’t healthy, Taylor, that’s just what they tell you.”  
  
“No, that one guy lost a lot of weight.”  
  
“He’s just holding up pants, that doesn’t mean they’re his.”  
  
“He has pictures!”  
  
Absolute chaos erupted between all six users at that point, and Clu watched and listened as they ceased making individual statements and slowly formed a single, shrieking collective. It was like bits, but in no way useful or entertaining.  
  
“Guys, stop—stop!” Amanda, who Clu assumed was the leader based solely on her willingness to tell the others what to do, put her hands up to silence the group.  
  
“Why do you have a guy’s wallet?” the one identified as Taylor asked.  
  
Clu looked down at the case in his hand, and the scattered contents on the table around it. “It’s not mine,” he replied.  
  
“Did you steal it?”  
  
Technically he had, and he was quite proud of slipping it from Sam’s pocket during the kiosk altercation, but the tone of the question indicated he should probably keep that information to himself. “It belongs to someone I know.”  
  
“Your boyfriend?”  
  
“Ashley, stop being so nosey. I’m sorry, Ashley talks a lot.”  
  
“I’m not sitting here anymore if you keep talking about me to people you don’t even know!”  
  
Clu was actually starting to wish Sam and the Iso would find him. The six alternated between bickering with one another and bombarding him with questions he only occasionally understood, including how old he was, where he worked, whether or not his hair color was real, why he was wearing all black, how long he’d been “dating” Sam, and what kind of skin cleanser he used. He supplied no answers, and they didn’t seem to notice.  
  
“So why did he give you his wallet?” Taylor asked.  
  
Searching for an answer that wouldn’t be an outright lie, he said, “I was told to buy clothes.”  
  
That drew a mixed reaction from the group. “That’s so sweet!” one said.  
  
“Uh, no. He should’ve taken her himself,” another countered.  
  
“I wanted to go by myself,” he said to halt the topic before it went any further. “I was looking for something.”  
  
“What?”  
  
He didn’t want to tell them that he was contemplating buying an animal just to anger Sam Flynn. Mostly to anger him, anyway—he also genuinely appreciated the kitten’s willingness to attack anything head-on, no matter the size. Foolish, but admirable. Rather than answering right away, Clu started packing the objects from Sam’s wallet back into each pocket, exactly where he had found them. He decided it would be easier to avoid the question. “It’s not important,” he said. “I’ll go get something to eat.”  
  
“What are you getting?” Ashley asked. She had dragged her chair closer to his, and the others were casually following her lead. Before he knew it he was surrounded.  
  
“I don’t know,” he answered honestly. Most of what he could smell probably would do fine for a meal, he only needed to sustain himself long enough to carry out the objective of finding new clothing. “What do you think I should eat?  
  
Four replied at once, and then Taylor and an as-yet unnamed girl independently suggested something called _Panda_ _Express_. They were pointing to a food vending booth along the nearby wall. It was close, and the length of the line indicated that it was reasonably popular with the other users, so he decided to take their advice. As he stood up to leave the table, all six stood with him.  
  
He looked over the six faces smiling up at him. “What are you doing?”  
  
“We’ll come with you.”  
  
“That’s not necessary,” he said.  
  
Ashley pointed her chin down and looked up at him past her glasses. “You seem kind of lost.”  
  
“I’m not lost.” Not really—he was in the mall. He just didn’t know where in the mall. Or where the mall was in relation to anything else. It hardly mattered, they didn’t seem willing to accept that anyway. “Fine. Are you also hungry?”  
  
“Are you buying us lunch?” Amanda asked.  
  
Clu looked at the wallet. “Technically Sam is.”  
  
One of the unnamed girls made a cooing noise and clapped her hands rapidly. “His name is Sam? Is he cute?”  
  
“He’s infuriating, arrogant, stupid, and reckless.”  
  
“He sounds hot.”  
  
  
  
_____________  
  
  
  
  
“About my height, uh, maybe a couple inches shorter. Light brown hair, blue eyes. Wearing all black.” Sam mentally ticked off all the identifying features he could think of. He wanted to add _arrogant asshole_ , but that probably wouldn’t help mall security locate Clu. “Hair comes to about here,” he added, setting his hand against the bottom of his own neck.  
  
“Your height?” the information booth attendant repeated. “How old is this individual, sir?”  
  
Sam looked around, trying to pull a number out of the air that sounded reasonable. There was no telling, really; Clu was a program, so he had probably been around for a few thousand cycles in Grid time, but he was created only a few months before Sam was born, so he was technically about twenty-eight in human years. Then again, his dad had been in his thirties when he made him… Then there was the fact that it had used Quorra as the template, and who knew how old she actually was.  
  
The longer he took to answer, the less courteous the attendant became. He set his pen down and gave Sam a look that said he was about to end their conversation. “Sir, if this isn’t a minor you’re looking for, we cannot do a mall-wide announcement. That’s policy.”  
  
“Yeah, but she’s not from around here.” What an understatement. “If she wanders off she’s gonna get lost.” He felt like he was talking about a dog with slightly below-average intelligence. Clu probably would have killed him if he’d heard any part of it. Then again, he had stolen Sam’s wallet and run off the first time his back was turned, so Sam didn’t give a shit what he might think at that particular moment.  
  
“I suggest you keep better track of your friends,” the man said.  
  
“Hey, come on. I’m just asking you to call her once. What’s worse, breaking policy, or preventing a missing person’s case?”  
  
The look he received spoke volumes more than the actual answer. “Good luck finding your friend, sir.”  
  
Sam turned away from the booth and cursed under his breath. The only way he was going to find Clu would be to search the whole mall, all three floors, top to bottom. At first he thought Clu had run off to buy the kitten, but a quick backtrack to the pet store revealed that both cats were still there. The only other thing Sam could think of was that he’d run off to prove a point.  
  
“Any luck?” Quorra asked as he joined her on a bench. She had been examining the leaves of a fake potted plant.  
  
“They won’t do an announcement because he’s not a minor,” Sam said. “It doesn’t matter, they probably would’ve thought I was crazy when I told them his name anyway.”  
  
She nodded, patting her hands on her knees and stretching her legs out. The more time she spent in the user world, the more trouble Sam had remembering that she was a program. “I doubt he’ll leave the mall,” she said.  
  
“What makes you think that?”  
  
“Well, he’s overconfident and proud, but he’s not stupid. Your father made him, and he did trust him with the Grid in his absence. Clu won’t leave because you’re here. You’re the only way home he has.” She sat back and reached up to pull at another fake palm frond. “I think he’ll come looking for us, eventually.”  
  
“Think so?”  
  
Quorra nodded, and Sam sat back against the bench to consider everything she’d said. She made a good point; Clu had shown himself to be remarkably restrained so far, even if he was an ass about it. Running off in the mall, leaving Sam without his wallet or any way to find him wasn’t the best choice he could have made, but if he stayed there, and eventually came to find them, it wasn’t really the end of the world. Still, he was pretty pissed. Assuming they ever found Clu, he intended to lay down some new rules, and they were going to be followed or no one but Sam was ever leaving the house again.  
  
He pulled out his phone to check the time, noting that it was already close to two in the afternoon. “I’m hungry. If I had some cash we could grab lunch at the food court.”  
  
“I have this.” Quorra reached in her pocket and produced a twenty. “I found it in the laundry room. I hope you don’t mind that I picked it up.”  
  
“You’re a life saver. Come on.”  
  
  
  
_____________  
  
  
  
  
“You should try these on.” One of the girls—Lily, apparently—held up a one of a pair of black heels. They were red on the bottom, for reasons Clu couldn’t immediately identify. “I think they’re your size.”  
  
“I don’t know my size,” Clu replied, reaching out to take the shoe. Sure enough, it fit. The six of them were impressively skilled at rapid estimation and pattern recognition. He put his foot down and looked at it from each side, turning his knee to get a better look. The shoe itself didn’t feel any different, but he did like the sleek lines and solid colors. He especially liked that they were black and red. It reminded him of the Grid.  
  
“Try on the other one,” Ashley said. She was holding Clu’s original shoes. “You should walk around in them.”  
  
Taylor nodded, reaching over to hand Clu one of the complimentary foot covers that were apparently necessary before anyone was allowed to place a shoe on their foot. “I like those,” she said.  
  
“They don’t seem very practical.” Clu didn’t want to admit that he enjoyed the idea of wearing something that served no purpose but decoration. He wouldn’t be able to ride a light cycle or fight in shoes that raised his feet and lifted his backside just to be appealing. He wanted them, though, and at least according to the girls, that was reason enough to buy them.  
  
“Yeah, but they look really good on you.”  
  
 Which was exactly the response he expected to hear.  
  
“And,” Amanda added, “this is the only place in the mall that carries these. You said classy, right? This is classy.”  
  
Clu thought about it for a moment, looking at his reflection in the small mirror on the floor. It was still odd seeing himself in a female body, but the more he saw it, the less it bothered him. If Kevin Flynn couldn’t reverse the changes made to him when he left the system, it wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world.  
  
“I’ll buy them,” he said, stepping back out of the heels one at a time. “I should also get something I can walk around in.” Shoes that wouldn’t cause him so much pain he wanted to hit something. Or someone.  
  
The user attendant took his card—Sam’s card—while another picked up the shoes and put them back in the box to be bagged. He’d been through the routine at another store, only they had to bring everything up to be purchased that time. It was all much easier with six pairs of hands constantly reaching for everything he even looked at. Once they were out of the shoe department, Amanda pointed them back out into the mall, leading the group and Clu without a question. Clu admired her confidence, though he was only following willingly because he wasn’t familiar with his surroundings. Otherwise she would have been deposed and put in the proper place the first time she told him where to go.  
  
  
  
_____________  
  
  
  
  
“Okay, so where has my card been used?” Sam had his phone up to one ear, a finger pressed against the other to block out the noise around him. “I don’t… _how much?_ Of course I want to stop purchases, are you fucking serious?”  
  
All the patience he had managed to summon regarding Clu’s disappearance and the three hours they had spent wandering around the mall looking for him disappeared the instant the woman on the line told Sam how much money had been spent on his card. At one store.  
  
“No, I know who has it, but I didn’t _tell_ her to take it. So, yeah, I guess it’s kinda stolen. Can’t you just freeze it now, and then unfreeze it when I get it back?” He listened to the bullshit explanation, then a repeat of the policy telling him why it was apparently impossible for a person to tell a computer what to do (as if he didn’t know _that_ from bitter experience), and finally the meaningless, hollow apology. “So my choices are to lock up my account and wait for a new card, or let her keep pissing away my money. Right. No, I understand. No, I’m not going to freeze it.” He pinched the bridge of his nose and sighed. “Yeah, you have a great day yourself.”  
  
“What did they say?”  
  
Sam gave Quorra a slow sideways glance, hoping that was enough of an answer for her. “We’re gonna have to find him. He just spent half my money at one store.”  
  
“I thought you said you had a lot of money, though.” Quorra jumped in beside him when he started walking, nearly sideways in an effort to look at him as they talked.  
  
“I do, sort of. It’s complicated. I still don’t want him spending that much, though.” He could barely string together the words necessary to explain himself. His whole body felt like it was going to fly apart in six different directions, and all he wanted to do was find Clu and wring his neck. “I’m gonna kill him. I really am.”  
  
“Sam.” Quorra put a hand on his arm. “Your father wouldn’t want that.”  
  
“No, not—don’t worry, I’m not going to kill him.” He wanted to, though.  
  
Of all the things Clu could have done to prove he wasn’t under Sam’s control, running off and spending such a ridiculous amount on clothes and shoes had to come with the biggest slap across the face. He was doing exactly what Sam had instructed, but doing it _his_ way, to prove a point. That was the worst part.  
  
Pulling out his phone a second time, Sam dialed Alan’s office number, hoping to catch him before he left for the day. If he missed him, Alan would be home before he got the page and returned the call. His refusal to just buy a cell phone was starting to become a serious inconvenience. “Come on, pick up,” he muttered into the phone. “Ah—Alan. I need your help. We lost Clu in the mall, and—yeah, and he took my wallet. Don’t ask, I don’t know. Can you come help us track him down? I can’t leave Quorra, and I need someone else out there looking for him.” If rush hour traffic didn’t work against them, Alan could be at the mall in around fifteen minutes. “No one asks for ID anymore, Alan.” That wouldn’t have been a problem if Clu needed the pin to use the card, but obviously he had figured out—or some cashier had told him—that it could be run as credit. “What? We tried that. That too, but he’s not a minor, so they won’t do it.” A minor probably wouldn’t have caused half as much trouble. “Alright, thanks.”  
  
It was ridiculous that he needed help finding a single program with no practical knowledge of the human world.  
  
  
  
_____________  
  
  
  
  
The girls had declined to follow Clu into the lingerie store, and only offered a brief explanation of what lingerie _was_ , so he had to track down another user to get help finding what he needed. She encouraged him to strip down, and then started poking and prodding with her fingers and some kind of numbered ribbon. Clu was about to tell her to leave him alone when she spouted off some random set of numbers and a letter, and bounded off to go retrieve a selection of items for him to try.  
  
They were extremely uncomfortable, and most had hard pieces built into the fabric that dug into his skin and pinched if he moved the wrong way. They offered support, but at the expense of the muscles on his shoulder and back, which he could tell would only get worse over time. Whatever user had designed the bra was an idiot.  
  
“How does that feel?” the attendant asked from the other side of the door. “Comfy?”  
  
“Hardly. I have a question.”  
  
“Shoot!”  
  
He rolled his eyes at her unrelenting exuberance. “If this is meant to be worn _under_ my clothes, why is it so decorative? And why does it have a small bow in the center? No one is going to see this but me.”  
  
The woman was silent for a moment, and then she cleared her throat and spoke quietly, obviously standing close to the door. “Uh, well… honey, sometimes you want your underclothes to look nice so… you know.”  
  
“Pretend I don’t.”  
  
Another awkward pause. “For when you’re with your boyfriend—or your girlfriend, if that’s, uh… But I can grab you a simpler style, if you want? Although the lacy ones I gave you match the panties you picked out.”  
  
Something about the word _panties_ made him feel very uncomfortable. He shook his head, then remembered she was actually waiting for a verbal response. “No,” he said. “These are fine.” After a moment he added, “Thank you.”  
  
“You’re welcome, honey.”  
  
Alone once more, he switched into another of the samples she had brought him. None of them were comfortable, and he didn’t understand why they were necessary. It was ridiculous and wasteful to make an entirely separate garment just to contain something that was obviously always going to be a part of the body; they weren’t accessories that came on and off. Even taking different body shapes into account, it would be a simple matter to manufacture several standard sizes, adding small, customizable details which would personalize each piece to fit the wearer. Instead they insisted on layer after layer, and each one was as flimsy and pointlessly decorative as the last, even though only _one_ would ever be seen by the vast majority of other users.  
  
He was already sick of shopping. Malls would _not_ be something he brought to the Grid when he returned.  
  
  
  
_____________  
  
  
  
Alan lifted his wrist and shrugged back the sleeve of his coat to check the time; it was a quarter to six, and Sam had called just after five. Unfortunately for everyone, Sam’s visit that day had caused enough of a stir that Alan had trouble just getting out of the building without going through an inquisition. He had told Sam to keep his plans for Encom to himself, at least until after the holidays, but the buzz surrounding his presence had already generated talk of a takeover. People weren’t stupid, contrary to what most of their behavior suggested. They knew something was up, and they wanted to know what it meant for them. Dillinger had “casually” stalked past his office door so many times Alan had contemplated inviting him inside just to rest his feet.  
  
After a second call, Sam had asked Alan to meet him at the food court if he had any luck locating Clu. Without his own phone, Alan would have no way to call Sam when or if he found her. He decided his best bet would be to start there and do a circuit of the lowest level, before moving up and doing the same thing on the second floor. Sam had said he and Quorra were on the third floor, working their way down; unless Clu had left the building already, one of them would find her.  
  
He started walking, keeping an eye out for a tall brunette in black leather, and wondering just how hard it could be to locate someone who fit that description. Everyone in the mall was dressed to the nines, and Alan knew Clu looked like she belonged in Sam’s garage. It wasn’t that her outfit was bad, it just didn’t fit in with the kind of people in an upscale shopping mall. Then again, neither did Sam and Quorra.  
  
He passed a pet store, making sure to duck inside briefly to look around per Sam’s suggestion; an employee he stopped remembered a woman matching Clu’s description, but it had been earlier in the day, and two others were with her. He thanked the employee and continued on, paying close attention to stores selling anything that might catch the attention of someone with the maturity level of a twelve year old.  
  
Not long after making his way up to the second floor, Alan came across a group of teenage girls sitting outside a store that seemed to focus mostly on ladies’ underwear, judging by the numerous window displays. Something about the girls caught his attention, and he couldn’t figure out why until one of them shifted, revealing the full design on the back of her jacket; it was the stylized _’89_ Sam had adopted as his personal logo, spray painting it all over his apartment and attaching decals to every available surface. Alan hadn’t seen him wear that particular jacket in years, but he had obviously dragged it out of the closet when Clu needed something to wear.  
  
“Excuse me,” he said, trying not to seem like a strange old man approaching a bunch of teenage girls. Unfortunately, minus the strange part, that was exactly what he was. He pointed at the logo. “That jacket you’re wearing—where did you get it?”  
  
The girl he’d pointed to looked back over her shoulder and shrugged. “It’s mine. Why?”  
  
“I don’t think so. I think that belongs to someone I know, and he loaned it to a—well, to a friend of his.” Clu was hardly a friend, but any realistic description he used would only make the situation that much more uncomfortable. “I’m looking for Clu. She’s got brown hair, black clothes, about this tall.” He held up his hand. “Is she inside?”  
  
The girls looked at one another, and then the one wearing the jacket looked down at the floor and nodded. “This is her stuff,” she said, pointing to half a dozen bags on the floor.  
  
Unbelievable. The names on some of the bags made Alan itch to grab an abacus and start tallying up the damage Clu had done to Sam’s bank account. “I appreciate your honesty,” he said to the girls.  
  
He had the option of going inside and confronting Clu himself; she wouldn’t be happy to see him, and he wasn’t particularly keen on the idea of seeing her again, not after the things that had been said before he stormed out of Sam’s house the last time. Sam kept reminding him that Clu was a program, that she didn’t—couldn’t—think the way humans did, but that didn’t make it any easier to accept. He still couldn’t accept that Sam kept calling Clu _he_.  
  
The girls had started whispering amongst themselves, occasionally looking up at Alan before returning to whatever private meeting they were holding. He looked back at the store, considering how much he _didn’t_ want to go wandering through a lingerie boutique, looking for a woman he couldn’t stand.  
  
At least there was one good thing about the entourage Clu had collected. “Would one of you mind if I borrowed your phone?”


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm not sure anyone is even still reading this fic after such a long hiatus, but if you are, props to your patience!
> 
> This fic _will_ be finished, as quickly as I can possibly manage. Apologies for the delay.

“You can keep this, but you’re not keeping these. You’re _definitely_ not keeping the shoes.”  
  
Clu started making noises in protest, but a stern look from Sam silenced him. “I like those shoes,” he groused instead.  
  
“Yeah? That’s great. They’re getting returned. We’ll stop someplace cheap on the way out, you can buy some black heels there. Spray paint the bottoms red and save me fourteen-hundred dollars.” Sam dropped the box down on the bench and continued rifling through the shopping bags. “I said _practical_ , not—how the hell did you even pick these out?” He held up a pair of lace panties, too curious to worry about how awkward it was lecturing a woman in the middle of a crowded mall with black lace underwear dangling from his fingers.  
  
Clu shrugged and crossed his arms. He wouldn’t look at Sam. “A user helped me.”  
  
“The teenagers?” Sam asked incredulously.  
  
“No. And you didn’t have to chase them off. They were extremely helpful, for users.”  
  
It was Sam’s turn to object. He laughed—a short, sarcastic sound that made Clu turn and glare at him. Fine with him, he was long past giving a damn about the program’s feelings. “Helpful at bleeding me dry,” he said. “And I didn’t like their attitude. Quorra didn’t even do anything to them.” He couldn’t figure out why, but the teenagers Clu had acquired were on poor Quorra like sharks around a bleeding diver from the moment she appeared. They seemed angry at her for some reason. Alan had to take her to the bookstore just so Sam could get the girls to pay attention long enough to scare them away with veiled threats about calling mall security.  
  
“So? They probably sensed her flawed nature,” Clu said. “It seems not all users are so willfully ignorant when it comes to the truth about—not those!” He stood up and reached for the stockings Sam had pulled out of one bag. “I need them.” Sam jerked them out of his grasp, and Clu threw himself back down on the bench. “They’re necessary,” he hissed petulantly.  
  
Sam sighed and weighed the package in his hand before tossing it in the bag with the rest of the clothes Clu was being allowed to keep. He wasn’t dense, he could tell what was going on: Clu was trying to relate things in the user world to the order and practical detail he was accustomed to on the Grid. At least, Sam thought that was what was happening. It was that, or Clu was a secret hoarder and compulsive shopper, and he had never been able to indulge his disorders inside the system. “Fine, you can keep the stockings.”  
  
“I want to get a different pair of shoes, then.”  
  
“No! You have flats already, they’ll match the other stuff—probably, I don’t know.” He watched Clu slide down in the seat. “Fine, one pair. _One_. I know you’re really into the whole dress-up thing right now, but I am not outfitting you with half the fucking mall. Most of this is going back. Blame yourself.” He tossed two more pairs of stockings into the bag and tore open another to see what was inside. At least the stockings were cheap. Inside the bag he found two bras. One matched the black lace underwear. That was just spectacular. “You can keep these, too,” he added. Why, _why_ was he letting Clu get away with keeping a single piece of clothing? His own irrational tolerance for the sheer bullshit he’d been forced to deal with in a few short hours made him want to punch himself. Of course he knew why—two round, perky reasons he _kept looking at_. “There’s something wrong with me,” he sighed.  
  
“I agree.”  
  
Before he could fire back a sarcastic reply, Alan and Quorra returned from the expedition to remove her from the reach of Clu’s pubescent fan club. Alan was carrying a bag that looked to be heavy with merchandise, and Quorra had both hands wrapped around some kind of drink. “It’s coffee,” she explained after a long sip. “Alan bought it for me.”  
  
Alan put a hand up to ward off the exasperated glance from Sam. “It’s decaf,” he said. “I also bought her a couple of maps and some books.” Some. It looked like she had half the store in that bag.  
  
“Thanks,” Sam muttered in reply. He was just opening the last bag, which turned out to contain what appeared to be mostly normal clothes. He pulled out a pair of jeans, two shirts, some (thankfully) plain underwear, and a jacket. It would do for three weeks. “Alright, we’re all done here. I’m gonna return this stuff.” He grabbed up the two bags of returns and pointed to the open shoebox on the bench.  
  
Alan cleared his throat. “She picked those?”  
  
Sam hummed an “ _Mhm_ ,” and tossed the lid on the box. “No accounting for taste, I guess. We’re gonna get out of here after I return this stuff. You don’t have to stick around if you don’t want.” He looked up at Alan, and found the man giving Clu’s shoebox a thousand-mile stare. “You okay?”  
  
“Huh? Oh, I’m fine. Just tired,” Alan said. He rubbed his eyes under the black frame of his glasses and yawned. “Your visit had the board pretty tense, so…”  
  
“So they took it out on you,” Sam finished for him. “Sorry about that.”  
  
Alan waved it off with a smile. He lifted the bag of books in front of Quorra, prompting her to take it, which she did—before pulling out half its contents and plunking herself down on the floor in front of the bench. “Just glad we managed to get this under control before it caused a problem. We have enough of those on our hands.” He made a dismissive gesture at Clu’s end of the bench. Clu wasn’t paying them any mind, though. He had started rifling through the items Sam deemed acceptable, picking out pieces of an outfit he apparently intended to wear at some point. When the lace panties came out, Alan made a noise of clear discomfort and started backing away. “Okay, that’s my cue to leave. Give me a call if you’re taking them out again, I’ll stay by the phone in case you need me.”  
  
Sam nodded to him and then turned to snatch the panties from Clu. “What are you doing? You gonna get changed here?”  
  
“I was thinking about it, what do you care?”  
  
“It’s illegal, you jackass! You’re gonna get arrested!”  
  
Clu threw the entire bag of clothes at Sam’s chest. “Why is incarceration the punishment for everything in this world!”  
  
“Are you serious? Did you just happen to forget that ship full of brainwashed zombies floating around next to the portal in _your_ world?” Sam demanded. He picked up the half empty bag and threw it back at Clu. “You can pick up the rest, I’m not your maid.”  
  
It would be a miracle if they made it three weeks without a homicide. Sam was briefly ashamed when the thought crossed his mind that he could kill Clu and dispose of the body, and no one would ever even know he was gone—or that he existed in the first place. Then Clu upturned the bag and dumped the rest of the clothes at Sam’s feet, and shame quickly turned to anger. He turned on his heel and stormed off in the direction of the exit, leaving both Clu and Quorra scrambling to gather their things and catch up.  
  
If his father had ever taken a minute to think about what a gigantic pain in the ass it might be to take the Isos out of the system, he never would have tried. It was like babysitting toddlers with the physical strength of adults and the common sense of small monkeys.  
  
“If you try to get out of the car when we stop for groceries, I’m leaving you there,” he warned over his shoulder.  
  
  
_____________  
  
  
  
They managed the rest of the week without any significant problems. The holidays provided some quiet time at the house, with no need for a trip to Encom’s offices for business or to dig up info on the laser, and it gave all three of them a chance to move past the events at the mall and find a comfortable daily routine with one another. Or as comfortable as it ever could be within the confines of the house. Quorra had quickly moved on from literature and geography, and started teaching herself to cook while she studied computers and programming. Clu watched over her shoulder whenever she was busy in the kitchen, and much to Sam’s surprise, she tolerated his uninvited presence. It would have been wholesome if not for the first few times Sam had to rush in and put out small cooking fires with a wet towel.  
  
Slowly, and with great patience, Sam started to move past the anger and frustration from the first few days. With more working knowledge of the user world, both programs became less of a constant, helpless pain in his ass, and more of a slight burden that he only had to mind when they were trying something new. At first he had assumed it would be Clu who gave him the most trouble, but knowledge clearly made Quorra bold, and it took a day or two to make her understand that she still wasn’t ready to go running around on her own, even if she had memorized the neighborhood layout. It wasn’t that he thought she would do anything terrible, unlike the little despot who had piggybacked out of the portal with them, but he was genuinely concerned she would take some stranger at their word and wind up in the back of a truck headed for the border. He briefly wondered if that was what it felt like to have kids, and then decided they probably didn’t come with as much loathing and regret... most of the time.  
  
Saturday afternoon saw Clu and Marv out in the backyard, attempting to play his real world version of Disc Wars, which really just amounted to lobbing the ball at the dog and chasing him down when he refused to give it back. Sam watched from the kitchen table, laughing at their antics over some combination of bread, eggs, and sausage that Quorra had gleefully placed in front of him. He ate without complaining, though he had no idea what possessed her to _combine_ everything. It was just shy of comfortably domestic. He was even willing to admit that he had started enjoying Clu’s company as much as Quorra’s, especially since things had settled between them after a couple of days of bitter silence. He was _not_ willing to admit that he liked the way her jeans bunched up around her thighs when she bent down to wrestle the ball out of Marv’s jaws. Or that he was slipping into thinking of Clu as an actual woman more and more every day.  
  
“How is it?” Quorra asked, interrupting the private war in his thoughts. She was leaning on the island counter, staring down at his plate. “You ate it all! I hope that means it was good.”  
  
“It was great,” Sam said. “And I’m not just saying that this time. One question, though: why did you chop it all up together?”  
  
“That was Clu’s suggestion,” Quorra said. “He pointed out that it would be more efficient that way, since it all ends up ground together in your mouth, and digested within the same organ before being passed into your—”  
  
“Yeah, I got it. I took eighth grade biology, don’t need a refresher. And I just ate. When did you start listening to Clu?”  
  
Quorra shrugged and began transferring the used dishes over to the sink. “I won’t dismiss his advice if it’s useful.”  
  
“Yeah, but you don’t feel better telling him to shut up sometimes when he starts yapping?” By that point Sam had gotten up from the table with his plate and silverware, and joined Quorra at the sink. When he looked up at the window again, Clu was on his back in the middle of the yard, with Marv lick-attacking his face. Clu was struggling to push him away, but failing.  
  
Quorra was quiet for a minute or two, before responding with a halfhearted sound and another hiccup of her shoulders that Sam could feel against his arm. “He’s just trying to help,” she said, sounding like she had only just fully formed the realization herself.  
  
“He’s a monster. He doesn’t know _how_ to help.” Sam’s tone was meant to be harsh, but even he had trouble taking it seriously. He was finding it more and more difficult to hold on to the anger he felt back on the Grid, when his father told him all that had happened to prevent him from coming home. He didn’t like that; he needed the feeling to keep himself focused.  
  
When he looked at her, he found Quorra’s expression was far too close to guilt for his comfort, and he realized he should apologize. “I’m sorry,” he said gently. “I want to have your compassion. But there’s twenty years of history that keeps dragging me right back where we started. I mean here he’s—” he gestured to the window as Clu got up and started running, only to be waylaid by Marv slamming into the back of his legs at top speed. “He’s like a different person. I mean, he’s still an asshole, but he’s _learning_ , a little. I don’t wanna jump the gun and say growing, but it’s getting there. How do I deal with that? How do I just stop—” Stop being so pathetically dependent on anger to interact with another being. “It’s a lot more complicated than just hating someone. Right?”  
  
“There is no precedent for a program leaving the Grid. I think your father would say that _anything is possible_ , and ask you to keep an open mind.”  
  
“Yeah, well, my dad also thought he could fix Clu with a hug, remember? Me and him don’t really have the same ideas about dealing with problems,” Sam muttered. He hated to say it, but half an eternity of isolation on the Grid had changed his father from the man Sam saw driving off that night. They just didn’t think the same anymore. “And I have my doubts about reforming a mass murderer.” Like whether it was appropriate to even try.  
  
“In your world, all he did was shut down an unknown process,” Quorra said quietly. She finished the rest of the dishes and glanced at him. “When you look at it like that, he simply carried out his function as he was instructed by his programmer.”  
  
“You’re talking about the guy who slaughtered your people.”  
  
“I know, and I will never forgive him for that. But I can’t be sure _that Clu_ ,” she said, pointing out the window, “is the system administrator who ordered the Purge. Taking us out of the system changed more than what we have underneath our skin. We aren’t programs anymore.”  
  
That was definitely something to think about. Sam chewed on the idea for a few minutes while Quorra finished straightening up the kitchen counter. Her cooking escapades had experienced a rocky start, but now she was generally able to make a meal without it requiring a monumental cleanup effort. “Let me get that for you,” he offered.  
  
“I’m fine, I like doing this. There’s a strange satisfaction that comes with seeing how much better things can look after they’ve gotten messy. We rarely had a chance to experience casual disorder like this on the Grid.”  
  
Sam arched an eyebrow curiously. He wondered if she had always known how to hide meaningful lessons in casual conversation, or if it was something she picked up from his father. “I get it. I should let go, and try to see Clu for what he’s becoming, instead of what he was.”  
  
“I’m just talking about cleaning the kitchen, Sam.”  
  
Sam stepped back a bit. “Oh. You mean—so you’re not trying to impart some of that amazing wisdom...”  
  
“No. But that does sound like something I should have said.”  
  
  
_____________  
  
  
  
“No,” Sam reached out and plucked the dice from Clu’s hand. “You only roll once this turn.”  
  
“But you rolled twice,” Quorra said. “Shouldn’t we each get a second turn as well?”  
  
“I rolled doubles. It’s—look, it’s the rules, and I didn’t write ‘em. Don’t start pouting, Clu, you of all people should appreciate rules.” He tossed the dice into the middle of the board, counted them up, and reached down to move his little silver top hat eight spaces over. “Great. Of course I landed on your property.”  
  
“So I pay you?” Clu asked.  
  
“No, I pay you. Man, if I was an asshole I’d be cleaning up right now.” Sam dug through his messy pile of money in search of the correct bills to pay rent on a property Clu probably bought only because he thought he was supposed to. “Here. If I wind up losing to you two, I’m burning this game out on the driveway. Just a heads up.”  
  
Quorra lit up at the mere suggestion of playing with fire. “I would like to see that.”  
  
“Yeah, I bet you would. Okay, your turn.”  
  
While Quorra rolled, Clu twisted himself around to look at the clock beside the TV. “It’s getting very late,” he said.  
  
It was late because Sam had spent the better part of an hour laying out the gameplay process in terms both programs could understand. “Yeah, it is. I’ll leave the board here, we can pick it up tomorrow.”  
  
“Can I take this with me?” Clu asked, holding up his tiny battleship.  
  
Sam shook his head and pointed to the board. “Leave it here so it doesn’t get lost. You don’t know what a miracle it is these things made it through my childhood without getting replaced by Gram’s knick-knacks.” The same couldn’t be said for the game of Connect Four he got for his tenth birthday, which wound up as Connect None because he lost all the plastic discs approximately three days after opening the box.  
  
Quorra quickly separated and counted all the money in the bank, then pushed it over between the TV stand and a lone armchair. “I know how much is in there,” she informed him gravely.  
  
“I see Dad had the same honest gaming streak with you that he did with me.”  
  
With the board and all paraphernalia safely tucked away, Sam waved goodnight to the girls and shuffled off to his own bedroom. He didn’t feel very much like sleeping, but Alan would be over early in the morning, whether he wanted to be awake then or not. They had decided to call Lora and ask about the laser, and Sam wasn’t sure he could make her believe whatever story he concocted to explain why he was fishing for info on a twenty year old relic that didn’t even exist anymore as far as she knew. In order to cover for him, Alan needed to know exactly what Sam was looking for. They had to make the call together. It was mutually agreed that Lora shouldn’t be brought in on the “family” secret, either; the whole idea was still giving Alan some trouble, and Lora would probably have them committed if they tried to tell her there was a world inside the computer populated by little electric people who really enjoyed killing each other. It was bad enough she had been lobbing fruit at them for the first half of the 1980s.  
  
He flopped down on his bed and pulled part of the comforter over himself, ending up barely covering more than his ass and one leg. It would do. He was certain he would be woken up by Clu crawling into his bed some time in the absurdly early hours of the morning, but at least he was wearing pants this time. After the incident in the mall, he had three blissful nights by himself, and he finally let his guard down on the last one, thinking the initial late night intrusion was only a fluke. The next night he was jolted awake by a hand prodding at his naked backside. Worse, he had been forced to remain on his stomach, balls tighter than a coiled spring, waiting for Clu to fall asleep. Only then did he dare to get up and go relieve some of the pressure in the bathroom. He was getting better at dealing with the unwelcome physical attraction during the day, but sleep left him unequipped to protect himself from a warm, half naked body lying next to his, and fingers touching him curiously. It was the _curious_ part that made it so much worse.  
  
He shut his eyes and started running scenarios in his mind, instead, trying to plan for every possible pitfall and hurdle they might encounter. Coherent thoughts began bleeding into half-dreams as he started to drift off, but he fought it, and continued chasing solutions until eventually he lost the battle, and sleep happily took over.  
  
  
_____________  
  
  
  
The jingle of Marv’s collar woke Clu. He grumbled something that probably would have earned him another obnoxious lecture from Sam, and then rolled over and buried himself under the pillows. He made a vague attempt to close his eyes and drift off again, but the closeness of the room, the darkness suddenly all seemed so stifling. He hated it. On the Grid, he was never alone. Even in total darkness, which hardly prevented him from seeing whatever was around him. He wasn’t actually afraid of the dark in the user world, just like he wasn’t actually lonely. It just seemed too quiet. He couldn’t tell what was outside his immediate field of vision, and that terrified him. If he had experienced the same sensation of sensory… emptiness while on the Grid, he would have assumed he’d been cut off from the system—and _that_ was a cause for genuine fear. Only the gentle panting of a snub-nosed canine reminded him he wasn’t really alone in his user bed. That he didn’t have to start reaching out for nonexistent feeds to quell the panic. Not that it would help.  
  
After a quick, snuffly roll in the tangle of blankets at the foot of the bed, Marv hopped down and padded out of the room, no doubt seeking the tiny door meant solely for his personal access to the back yard. Clu tried creating a memory note to ask Sam why he didn’t just teach the dog to use the primary door, but there was no such function in a user’s brain. He would have to try to remember on his own.  
  
With Marv gone, the comforting presence of another breathing body went with him. Clu pulled the blanket high over his head, but it didn’t do anything to shut out the feeling of a formless weight bearing down on him; the itch that crawled up the back of his neck as he imagined a million eyes staring at him that he couldn’t access, couldn’t command or simply destroy. He had felt more secure in the mall, surrounded by users who actually could look at him.  
  
When some time passed and Marv didn’t return, Clu ventured out from under the blankets. He called the dog by his name, trying to keep his own voice down to avoid waking the Iso, who was a ferociously unpleasant creature when she was first waking up. When he stopped and strained to listen for the gentle _click-click_ of little claws on the kitchen floor, it occurred to him that he felt much more alert than he should for the middle of the night. The clock beside the bed read 3:43 in bright green, inelegant figures, but Clu didn’t feel like he should go back to sleep. In fact, he felt rather anxious. Like his body was wound tight somewhere, and maybe that explained his irrational anxiety. He kicked off the blankets and slid out of the bed, making sure to turn on the ridiculously inefficient lamp as he got up. His first attempt at walking around in the dark had ended in pain, blood, and something Sam said was meant to “disinfect” his wound—from what, he had no idea. The liquid had actually caused more pain than the initial injury, and Clu informed Sam of this, before jumping up from the side of the bathtub and hobbling out of the room at top speed. Eventually Sam chased him down and applied a bandage as well, but even that took a great deal more trust than Clu felt the user deserved under the circumstances.  
  
The Iso would undoubtedly complain if he turned on the light in the hall, so Clu put a hand to the wall and made his way slowly toward the stairs. He intended to find the board game in the living room and continue his detailed examination of the intricate little ship figurine, while also exploring whatever was on the TV. Sam had told him there wasn’t anything good on at night, but Clu disagreed. A brief investigation of the first twenty channels had revealed a broadcast dedicated solely to providing users with superior food processing technology. It was fascinating.  
  
Marv waddled over and ran up the stairs just as Clu came off the last step into the living room. “What took you so long?” he hissed, but the dog paid him no mind. Animals, it seemed, had figured out how to trick humans into providing for them, while doing whatever they wanted and only returning affection or obedience when it suited their own desires. He tried the same thing and Sam just lectured and berated him.  
  
The board game was still tucked into the corner between the TV stand and a chair. Clu reached down and gingerly plucked the battleship from the space where he had last landed. He made sure to leave one of his property tickets in its place so he would remember where to put it back when he was done. The remote was on the chair next to it, and he grabbed that on his way to the couch as well, before settling in to see what was on.  
  
  
_____________  
  
  
  
Sam awoke to the odd sensation of _not_ having someone in the bed next to him. The clock read a little after four in the morning, and he knew he didn’t stand a chance of getting back to sleep after the effort it took to make it there in the first place. He rubbed his eyes and rolled out of the bed, shuffling into the dark bathroom to splash some water on his face. It figured that the first night he had his bed all to himself, he still wouldn’t be able to make full use of it.  
  
The sound of the TV reached him before he made it out of the bathroom. It wouldn’t be the first time one of the programs had fallen asleep watching something, but he usually didn’t find them out there so late. He reached for the doorknob just as an unmistakably obscene sound filtered into the room.  
  
Someone was watching porn.  
  
“ _No way_ ,” he whispered. And then, “ _Oh god, please don’t be Clu_.”  
  
He could pretend he didn’t hear anything and just go back to bed. Try to ignore whatever errant sounds made it into the room through the door, maybe stack a couple of pillows on his head to muffle whatever wasn’t covered by the roar of his own blood pounding through his veins like a marching band because now he _couldn’t_ ignore the idea of it being Clu out there. Again his mind revisited the unfairness of his total inability to think of Quorra that way instead, and his unwanted fixation on how damn soft Clu’s skin looked. Of course, he had plenty of proof that it felt that way, too.  
  
No, he wouldn’t be going back to bed. The only thing he could do, as a rational adult in control of his own impulses, would be to walk into the living room and inform whoever was out there that they were not to go near those channels, then take the remote, turn off the TV, and usher them back upstairs.  
  
Yes. That was a good plan.  
  
He got as far as opening the door before it all went flying out the window. Clu was on the couch, one hand deep into a pair of panties that did absolutely nothing to hide what was going on underneath, head down and mouth open as she panted quietly. Sam noted he had switched over to _she_ again, and tried to force himself to think of Clu as a man, instead.  
  
A very physically appealing man with extremely perky nipples that he would like to play with like a video game controller.  
  
Damn it, _no_. He steeled himself and tried to force his body to turn around and retreat to the bedroom. His attempt at wrestling his libido for the steering wheel failed completely when a breathy whimper escaped from Clu, and his dick took over the act of thinking. It wouldn’t hurt, he decided, to enjoy the show for a moment. He was in the dark, with a bright television wrecking night vision for both of them, and the fake, mechanical moans of the half-plastic porn star on the TV drowning out his own labored breathing. When had that started, anyway?  
  
And really, so what if he watched? Clu more than owed him for all the suffering he’d caused over the past week. And the two decades before that. He was going back in the computer, anyway, so how much could it possibly matter if he marched over there and asked if she would like a hand. Or a mouth. Or a dick.  
  
Before he knew it he was shuffling like a tit-seeking zombie across the living room carpet, hands thrust into the pockets of his flannel pants but twitching angrily like they were being denied something he had promised them. _You’ll get your turn_ , he thought to them.  
  
The ungainly movement alerted Clu to his presence, and suddenly all stopped as they simply stared at one another. Clu’s hand twitched beneath the thin cotton panties, as though she wanted to keep going, but her eyes narrowed suspiciously at Sam; perhaps wondering if this was something that was on his long list of Not In The House activities.  
  
“Do—uh—” He cleared his throat. “D-do you want some help there?”  
  
Oh, that was _smooth_. The urge to press his palms to his eyes and run blindly back into the bedroom welled up until it was only slightly less powerful than the urge to dick the program who had ruined his life. He really hated _everything_ sometimes.  
  
“What?” Clu asked. She looked at Sam like he had just asked if he could gnaw off her fingers.  
  
“I—never mind. Sorry. Oh, god, what is wrong with m—just—I’m sorry. Carry on. Ah, fuck!” He put his hands up and shut his eyes tight. “I mean… enjoy yourself? Oh _my god_.” He couldn’t shut up. He was physically incapable of shutting his own mouth. If Clu reached up and punched him in the throat he would deserve it, and he would crawl back to his bedroom without any complaints because he had brought all of it on himself.  
  
When he opened his eyes and looked down, Clu had turned back to the TV. Sam waited, probably unwisely, for a reply. After what felt like an eternity—during which he did his best to memorize everything in front of him, down to the last detail—he started backing up one foot at a time, intending to return to the bedroom as quietly as possible.  
  
“Yes,” Clu said, a little more breathlessly than the only other word she had spoken that evening.  
  
Sam straightened his shoulders and stood up straight. He blinked a couple of times. “What?”  
  
“You should come here.” Clu withdrew the busy hand and drew it up to her face. After a moment’s hesitation she darted her tongue out to touch one wet fingertip.  
  
Sam put a hand on the back of the couch to keep himself steady. He swallowed, and took a long, generous look at Clu’s body. “Are you serious?” he asked. A voice in his head screamed at him to shut up, but he fought it valiantly.  
  
Another glance at the TV, and Sam found himself mesmerized by the way Clu’s hair swept over the upward curve of her neck, fanning out before falling back into place when she turned to face him again. “Yes.” He looked closely at her face, noting a blush barely visible in the harsh light cast by the screen, and pupils dilated a little more than normal for the setting. His body made the decision for him. He stepped over the arm of the couch and crouched on the cushion next to Clu. After a moment he broke the stare and let his gaze wander; Clu’s body couldn’t have been broadcasting arousal any more if there was a bright neon sign with an arrow blinking above her head.  
  
He was definitely going to hell for this.  
  
With a sound meant more to reprimand himself than to display his lust, he reached forward and grabbed Clu’s arms, throwing them both across the couch and barely missing the wooden arm rest with Clu’s head. He winced apologetically and moved over her more fully, one hand holding himself up so that he was hovering only inches away, and the other digging frantically at the hem of Clu’s shirt. He spared one last thought for his abandoned morality, and then jerked the form-fitting cotton up, tugging side-to-side when it met resistance at her breasts. “Damn it,” he half-whispered to himself. He couldn’t seem to find a comfortable way of ignoring his nagging inability to reconcile _this_ Clu, very-clearly-a-girl-Clu, with old Clu—the one with shoulders so broad Sam could have asked him for a piggyback ride.  
  
Then he remembered Quorra’s words: _I can’t be sure that Clu is the system administrator who ordered the Purge_.  
  
If _she_ was a different person, then he had no real reason to feel guilty. That made sense. Of course, he would regret everything the second he wasn’t being guided by an extremely insistent hard-on, but right now… right now he could make do with that little shred of almost-logic.  
  
“What’s wrong?” Clu asked. Sam could see her expression start to shift away from arousal and move more toward frustrated confusion. He wasn’t going to let that happen.  
  
“You’re just…” he struggled to find a word that would steer them back on course.  
  
Oh. _Oh_. That was just fucked up on so many levels. He almost wanted to congratulate himself for being such an asshole, even as his mind fought to make him hate himself for ever stooping so low just to get his hands on a pair of tits.  
  
“What?” Clu prompted.  
  
Sam curled the corner of his mouth in a smile. “Perfect.”  
  
Oh yeah, straight to hell.


	6. Chapter 6

Clu’s eyes were so wide, so ridiculously excited and happy, and it hit Sam like a ton of bricks at ninety miles an hour. He tried to lean down and kiss away the angry ball of self loathing growing in the pit of his stomach, but he could still _feel_ the smile on Clu’s lips.  
  
“ _Perfect_ ,” he heard Clu whisper against his mouth as he pulled back.  
  
That was it. That was all he could take. “I’m sorry,” he mumbled. When he sat up, Clu tried to follow him, clinging to his shoulders.  
  
“What’s wrong?”  
  
“I can’t do this. It’s—this isn’t right. I’m sorry.” Sam looked down, realizing that Clu’s shirt was still pulled up. “I’m really, really sorry.”  
  
Clu looked disappointed for a few fleeting seconds, and then the rage set in. “What do you mean _it isn’t right?_ I want to do that, all of that!” a hand flew out to the side, and Clu gestured emphatically to the TV, where the porn star was giving a very enthusiastic blowjob to her male counterpart.  
  
Sam put a hand out and gestured for Clu to lower his voice, but the meaning was lost, and the program was in full-on tantrum mode, stage one. “You never finish what you start,” he spat at Sam. “Any of you!” Sam jumped back off the couch as Clu kicked him away. “You make promises, and then you break them. You start projects, and you leave them unfinished. Imagine what will happen to the Iso when you’re done with her, and something more interesting comes along!”  
  
“Since when do you care about Quorra, and—hey, don’t compare me to my dad, we’re not the same person!” And it wasn’t like his father had left Clu of his own volition. The man probably would have spent every damn day on the Grid if real life hadn’t gotten in the way.  
  
The look Clu turned on Sam was downright vicious. “You’re no better,” he muttered angrily.  
  
Sam could feel his temper slipping. It was bad enough he had to clean up everyone’s messes and fix it all so everybody ended up happy, and keep Quorra safe, and do right by Clu, and keep Alan in the loop—he was expected to atone for his father, too? “I’m stopping _because_ I don’t want make the same mistake he did, god damn it!” He balled his fist and slammed it down on the back of the couch. He _hated_ having to admit his father’s mistakes, even after listening to each and every one confessed straight from the source. Or maybe it was because of that, he didn’t even know anymore.  
  
Clu was silent, which was probably a good thing for both of them. Sam took the opportunity to continue his rant. “If I do this—if we do this—I’ll be treating you like a toy I can play with and set aside when I’m done. Did you like how that felt the last time?”  
  
There. That was the reaction he wanted. Clu sat up pin-straight, eyes wide, and his jaw clenched so tight Sam could see the muscles twitch as he let the words sink in. He stared defiantly, and at first Sam was sure another round was headed his way, but then nothing happened. A few quiet minutes passed between them, and over that time Clu seemed to lose the will to fight. His shoulders slumped again, and he turned away, sighing deeply as the rest of his body relaxed.  
  
Sam decided that was enough reality for one night. He did his best to soft his own expression and relax his stance. Neither of them needed to walk away humiliated _and_ bitter. “You think I wouldn’t jump at the chance to forget all that?” he asked, gesturing to Clu. “I’m just trying to do the right thing here.”  
  
Clu nodded. After a moment he cleared his throat and said, “You can turn off the TV. I don’t feel like watching it anymore.”  
  
Sam walked over and tapped the button to turn off the set. With the only light source and the ambient sounds of porn suddenly gone, they were plunged into darkness and silence. Sam heard some shuffling, and he strained at shadows to see what was going on. “You going back upstairs?” he asked. He thought back to the first night Clu had crawled into his bed, and the half-mumbled explanation about being alone. He wondered if it had something to do with being away from the system; it didn’t seem to bother Quorra, but then again, she wasn’t like Clu. At all. “Come on. You can sleep in my room.”  
  
“I’m going back to my bed.”  
  
Well, he was at fifty-fifty on noble gestures for the evening. Clu brushed past, and Sam stepped aside to let him go. He felt like an asshole. Laying his cards out on the table had seemed like a good idea at the time, but he wondered if it wasn’t just as much of a mistake to have explained himself, instead of just letting Clu go to bed angry. Clu knew how to be angry—they both did. Instead, he was going back to bed with the fresh sting of his creator’s mistakes forced on him, and Sam was going to fall asleep thinking of how he had just stabbed his own father in the back, even though every word he’d said was true.  
  
“Goodnight,” he called as Clu started up the stairs.  
  
There was no answer.  
  
  
_____________  
  
  
  
A restless night followed Clu’s encounter with Sam on the couch, and he woke some time in the mid-morning to the sound of someone shuffling around in the bathroom outside. After poking his head out into the hall, he discovered it was the Iso. He watched her stumble around inside the small, tiled room. She undressed and replace her clothing, then began brushing her teeth—something Sam kept insisting they do “For his sake.”  
  
“What do you want?” the Iso groused from behind a mouthful of foam. Clu made a disgusted face and looked away. He tried to make the process as short and tidy as possible for himself, but the Iso had no such concerns; she went at it like Marv with a rubber toy. It made his stomach turn.  
  
He watched the end of the hall, just before the stairs, instead of looking directly at her while she cleaned her teeth. “I don’t understand how users can create the perfection found on the Grid, while they wallow in inefficiency and filth in their own world.” He stopped and thought about it for a moment. “Maybe that’s why they do it.” What better reason to seek utopia than to escape the mundane drudgery of your own existence?  
  
The Iso spit into the sink, the sound of which added another nauseous roll to Clu’s already sour stomach. He hated having a stomach. “Users don’t seem to have any problem with most of the inconvenient aspects of their world. And if they do, they just make improvements.”  
  
“This world is built on ineffectual, ritualistic toiling. Everything they do seems to contribute to making it more needlessly complicated for themselves and their own offspring—and that’s something else. They don’t just copy their files to make duplicates. I saw it on the TV. It’s _disgusting_.” Part of it, anyway. He was still interested in trying the first part of the process for himself. He might have had a chance the night before, if not for Sam.  
  
“What I read of it seemed miraculous and beautiful.”  
  
“Well, you also crawled out of the sea. I don’t think you have the most unbiased perspective on the matter.”  
  
That earned him a glare, but she continued without comment. Clu gave up on her. He wasn’t going to convince an Iso that users weren’t the pinnacle of grace that most programs blindly believed they were. Every so often they managed to hold brief and even civil conversations on the matter, but none of them ever amounted to what he considered actual progress. Truthfully, he was more concerned with Sam’s whereabouts. As soon as he had burrowed into his blankets again, Clu regretted turning down Sam’s offer to sleep downstairs. Marv was an unreliable roommate, and Clu had barely managed to sleep at all by himself. Though he actually found some small comfort in focusing on his disconnect from the system, rather than his memories of Kevin Flynn.  
  
“Sam said we’re going with him today,” the Iso said as she pulled a little white string between her teeth.  
  
Oh good, another opportunity to observe the user world from the back seat of Alan Bradley’s car. “Really.”  
  
She nodded, ignoring that it wasn’t actually a question. “You should get dressed.”  
  
“When I feel like it. How long are you going to take in there?” he asked.  
  
The Iso moved on to brushing her hair; something that Clu had initially considered pointless and time-consuming, until his own hair ended up so badly tangled that Sam had to spend an afternoon painfully straightening out each and every knot. Clu couldn’t decide if it was a side effect of having long hair, or something that translated poorly between the Grid and the user world. After a while he decided he didn’t care, he just brushed from that point on to avoid more pain.  
  
“You have your own bathroom.”  
  
“I didn’t ask because I want to use yours, I just want to know how long you’re going to be in there,” he snapped.  
  
“I’ll be out in a few minutes.”  
  
Without bothering to conclude their little chat, Clu left the hall and headed down the stairs. He was sure Sam would be out of his room already if he had plans to go out somewhere. It didn’t seem to take him very long to get ready in the mornings, especially compared to Clu and the Iso. They had to put on, at minimum, two layers each. Sam seemed to roll out of bed and throw on whatever didn’t smell like he had worn it half a dozen times already.  
  
Clu found him in the kitchen, sitting at the end of the table with a cup of juice. He didn’t look up when his solitude was interrupted, nor did he say anything when Clu purposely bumped the table on his way past, sending a small wave of juice sloshing out of the cup and onto the tabletop.  
  
“How did you sleep?” Sam said just as Clu started to pour himself his own drink. The unexpected sound made him jump, and the juice in his hand splashed across the counter in an orange streak.  
  
“I didn’t,” he said after his heart finally stopped thumping against his chest.  
  
“Me either.”  
  
That was the extent of their conversation before the Iso came into the room. She was back to her usual, obnoxiously perky disposition, which Clu found even harder to handle with no sleep. He longed for a glass of energy and a quick recharge in a dark room. And a body that wasn’t constantly demanding his attention.  
  
“Good morning!” she said as she set herself down in one of the chairs. “I’m ready to leave, Sam.”  
  
“You can relax for a little bit,” Sam said. “We’re going around ten. Alan said I should make them wait for me. I guess he knows something I don’t.”  
  
Clu finished wiping up the juice on the counter with a sponge—a disgusting, filthy piece of absorbent material that smelled _terrible_. He tossed it into the sink and turned around to face the table. “We’re going to Encom?”  
  
“Yeah,” Sam answered into the glass of juice. He finish it off and turned it over on top of the puddle that had spilled before. “I have a meeting, and you’re going to spend the day playing Alan’s secretary.”  
  
  
_____________  
  
  
  
Clu shifted in the back seat, trying to keep his skirt from bunching around his thighs. Every slight jostle only seemed to work the fabric up a little more. “Do you have to hit _every_ bump along the way?” he complained.  
  
“We’re almost there, just deal with it,” came the exasperated reply from Sam. “Don’t give Alan a hard time today, okay? He only agreed to this because I promised you’d be on your best behavior. I don’t like having to lie to him, so make an effort.”  
  
“Why does the Iso get to go with you?”  
  
“Because.”  
  
Clu waited a moment, expecting more of an explanation. When none came he frowned and leaned forward until he was right behind Sam’s headrest. “That isn’t an answer.”  
  
“Because parading around the office with one girl is bad enough, people are gonna think I’m some kind of pimp if I have two. And you argue with everything I say.”  
  
“I do not.”  
  
The Iso turned around and looked over Clu’s outfit. “I like your clothing today,” she said. “It matches well.”  
  
Clu bristled a bit at the compliment, trying to think of a way to turn it into an insult so he could say something nasty to her in reply. He didn’t like the idea of being nice to an Iso, even if he _was_ proud of how well he had dressed himself. “Did you think I couldn’t match black and black?”  
  
“Well, I—”  
  
“Why are you still talking to me?”  
  
The car turned off the street and onto the short ramp for the underground garage. Sam pulled out a plastic card to flash it at the user monitoring one of the two gates. “Good morning, Mr. Flynn,” the guard said, giving Sam a curt nod. “Mr. Bradley asked me to give you this message.” He produced a folded piece of paper and handed it off to Sam, who thanked him, before pulling past the booth and into the garage. As they drove by, Clu looked over the guard, wondering why he wasn’t wearing any armor. That seemed like a dangerous oversight.  
  
“What does it say?” the Iso asked. She leaned over in her seat, trying to get a peek at the paper.  
  
“Alan’s moved up to the fifty-ninth floor,” Sam said, reading from the note. “Clu, can I trust you to make it up there on your own?”  
  
Clu rolled his eyes. “I have navigated tall buildings without your help before.”  
  
They parked and exited the vehicle, and both programs followed Sam into the lower lobby. Once inside, they passed a security desk and another ID check, which seemed to frustrate Sam. They finally made it to the elevator, where Sam tossed the papers he was carrying down on the floor, and readjusted part of his suit. “They know who I am, they just like to screw with me,” he muttered.  
  
The Iso looked around the elevator compartment. “Who?”  
  
“Security. They don’t really like me. Can’t say I blame them, but it’s a pain in the ass.”  
  
“But it’s your building,” the Iso said, clearly confused.  
  
Clu was tempted to step in and explain how little that mattered if the work was conducted by individuals who were dissatisfied with the system’s leadership, but that touched on subjects he would rather not discuss in a small space with two enemies. Or rather, one enemy and one user who didn’t seem to know which side he was on. He decided to wait, and give Sam advice later, when the Iso was asleep. Clu could teach the young Flynn a thing or two about keeping his work force operating efficiently, with few complaints.  
  
The elevator stopped on floor forty, and Sam exited with the Iso. “See you in a few hours,” he said. “Remember, no fighting.”  
  
Clu waited for the doors to start closing, and then he smiled and leaned forward with one hand cupped behind his ear. “What?”  
  
“You heard me!”  
  
“What?”  
  
The doors shut, and Clu heard Sam yell something as the car started on its way up to where Alan Bradley’s office had been relocated. Though he wouldn’t have admitted it to Sam—or anyone else, really—Clu was not looking forward to spending a day dealing with the user who had written his former enforcer and one-time friend. Lacking the foresight to keep from pushing Alan into a rage over and over the first few times they met, Clu had a feeling he would pass most of the time being lectured and berated, or ignored completely. He didn’t like either possibility. If his history with Tron was any indication, Alan would find some way to make him miserable just to prove a point.  
  
The elevator came to a stop again, and Clu exited to find himself in a wide, spacious hallway, lined in artwork and technical diagrams that all appeared related to building design. Clu recognized some of the images—one was similar to the many skyscrapers that dotted his own skyline. Another looked like something that might have been a precursor to the arena, if slightly smaller, and more fluid in shape. The diagrams were all marked with a symbol he didn’t recognize, and the letters _J.C._ down in the lower right-hand corner, along with a date. “Nineteen eighty-three,” Clu read aloud. He looked up at the title of the design. “ _Stadium Concept Beta_.”  
  
“Those are Jordan’s,” Clu heard Alan say behind him. He turned around to find him looming just a few feet away. “They’ve been down in storage for the past twenty years. I had them moved back up here when Sam promoted me.”  
  
“How nice for you,” Clu mumbled. “You said Jordan. Flynn’s wife?”  
  
Alan nodded. “Did he ever talk about her?”  
  
Clu turned back to the picture and shrugged. “Two, maybe three times. I wasn’t keeping track, the information seemed irrelevant.” He pointed to part of the structure. “This,” he said, tapping one of three extra support struts spaced out along the exterior, “is a very good idea. I don’t understand Flynn’s obvious changes to the design. We went through five builds before Shaddox figured out something that would work without collapsing in on itself.”  
  
“Kevin always had his own ideas about what worked and what didn’t. So, he used Jordan’s designs on the Grid?” Alan asked casually. “It must look pretty amazing in there.”  
  
“It’s visually and functionally perfect. Or it was when I left.” Clu finished looking over the diagram and turned around to face his host. “Sam said I would be helping you today.”  
  
Alan nodded and gestured down the hall, toward an open door. “This way.”  
  
Clu noted that he was being treated with a great deal more respect than in previous encounters, and he found the abrupt change unsettling. It made him wonder what the user had in store for him. When they entered the office he found it only contained a single desk, a standing storage unit of some kind, a few general supplies, and two chairs; one facing the desk, and another behind it. It was empty otherwise. “Efficient,” he said.  
  
“Hardly. I’m just moving in. In a week this place will look like I’ve been here for ten years.”  
  
“Is that what I’m supposed to help you with?” Clu asked. He cursed Sam for making him dress “nicely” if he was only going to be put to use doing manual labor.  
  
Alan shook his head. “No, not today.”  
  
“Then what?”  
  
“Today you’re going to sit there,” Alan said, pointing to the extra chair.  
  
Clu sat himself in the chair, making sure to sweep the bottom of the skirt forward like the girls had taught him. “And?”  
  
“And that’s it. I’ll let you know when it’s time for lunch.”  
  
  
_____________  
  
  
  
“I hope Alan and Clu are okay up there,” Sam confided in Quorra over a stack of paperwork. She was sorting the pages by signature or initial, depending on which one they required. For a company that specialized in technology, they sure used a shit ton of paper. “Maybe we can take a ten minute break, go check on them. Think that’s a good idea?”  
  
Quorra leaned in for privacy. “I don’t think we can.”  
  
“Why not?”  
  
“Because the other users haven’t stopped staring at us since we sat down. I don’t think they’ll let us leave until we’re done.”  
  
Sam looked over at the row of lawyers flanking Hardington and Mackey; they looked like Men In Black, with their matching suits and flat stares. He watched them for a few seconds, trying to see if he could catch one blinking. They reminded him of Rinzler. “Hey, you guys want some coffee? Maybe we can take a quick—”  
  
“There will be time for refreshments once business is concluded,” one of the lawyers said. The others didn’t even twitch, like they all knew he was going to speak. The effect was creepy.  
  
Sam shrugged, and returned to slashing his signature across one paper after another. “Okay. Well, we’re almost done here, anyway.”  
  
“Once you have completed forms A through G, we will begin the acquisition paperwork, which should be completed in triplicate, dated, and double signed for verification purposes,” another lawyer said.  
  
“Begin? Wait— _triplicate?_ ”  
  
“If you would please finish the preliminary documents, we can get started.”  
  
Quorra looked at Sam, who turned and looked up at the clock on the wall; they had already been there for over an hour. “This better fucking be worth it.”  
  
  
_____________  
  
  
  
Alan pretended to write on a piece of paper while he surreptitiously observed Clu from behind the frame of his glasses. She was sitting in the chair as instructed, but doing her best to be as annoying as possible, short of getting up and dancing on top of his desk. Every time he started writing, she would make a noise, or fidget in the seat. It would have driven him nuts if he had been trying to get any actual work done. He tapped the eraser end of his pencil on the paper for a moment and then sat back in his chair. “Bored?”  
  
“What do you think?”  
  
“Sam tells me you like order— _efficiency_ , I think he said. Is that right?” He suppressed a smile when Clu narrowed her eyes suspiciously. _Well, aren’t you_ _clever_. “See that stack of files on top of the cabinet over there?” The stack in question was piled haphazardly on the corner of the filing cabinet, with loose sheets sticking out in every direction. Whoever had left them there obviously didn’t give a damn about what Alan thought of their efforts. Clu turned and looked at the files, then turned back around and nodded. “Bring them over here,” Alan said. When Clu didn’t move to follow his instructions, he added a belated “Please.”  
  
He almost felt guilty, but it was too easy, and way too good to pass up. Kevin probably would have been proud, especially since Alan was pretty sure he had done the same damn thing to an unlucky intern at some point. Once the files were in his hand, he swung them out to the side and let go, tossing all the contents across the floor of the office. “Organize those,” he said casually.  
  
Clu seemed too stunned to think of a reply. A first, that Alan knew of. She just stood there, staring at the mess on the floor, mouth hanging open in disbelief. Alan allowed himself a small chuckle; every file contained multiple copies of the same set of forms. She would probably figure that out on her own, eventually.  
  
  
_____________  
  
  
  
It took a while, but Clu had cleaned up the papers, separated them and created four neat stacks, then calculated how many of each would fit in the seven folders (with a remainder of one unnecessary page that had no mates). He was preparing to count them out when Alan cleared his throat and tapped on the desk to get Clu’s attention. “It’s time for lunch,” he said.  
  
“I’m almost done.”  
  
Alan stood up and shrugged into his jacket. “That’s fine,” he said. “I’ll see you in an hour.”  
  
Clu almost knocked over one of the paper stacks when he whirled around to look up at Alan. “But you said—”  
  
“It’s time for lunch. _My lunch_.” Clu could see the satisfaction in his smug smile. Damn him. “Keep up the good work.” He opened a drawer in the desk and pulled something out, slipping it into his back pocket as he headed for the door. “And stay in here while I’m gone.”  
  
“I’m glad I repurposed Tron,” Clu snarled at his back.  
  
“You just lost the fruit cup I was planning to bring back for you.”  
  
The door shut behind him, and Clu was left sitting on the floor, papers in hand, still trying to think of a nasty reply to hurl back at his tormentor. He really hated Alan Bradley. The man seemed determined to make his short stay in the user world as miserable as possible, and unlike Sam, he was actually capable of following through without random events lining up in his favor. He had always admired that cunning streak in Tron, but in a bespectacled user with too much free time and power on his hands, it was inconveniently menacing.  
  
Sam and the Iso were probably enjoying the kind of treatment Clu would have received if he had strolled into the End of Line with a cadre of blackguard in tow. This was his building, his company now. Although, with a friend like Alan, Clu wondered just how long Sam would _keep_ Encom. He couldn’t imagine why someone with the skills to write the second most powerful program on the Grid would be satisfied with a mundane function Jarvis could have done in his down time. The only possible explanation was that Alan had an ulterior motive, or his deviousness and natural talent came without the added bonus of common sense. Either way, it wasn’t Clu’s problem once he was back in the system, so he saw no reason to discuss the matter with Sam.  
  
His stomach rumbled, and Clu placed a hand on it in sympathy. He hated hunger, too. He hated everything about the user world—its filthy surfaces; the way everyone wandered around aimlessly; the disgusting but strangely appetizing food (and what happened to it later); the inefficient use of resources and space; and most of all, the _people_. He didn’t understand why Flynn hadn’t just let him take the portal out all those cycles ago. Clu would have clawed his way back in on his own after a week.  
  
Of course, Sam had explained the difference in the passage of time between the user world and the Grid. It had been about a week since he left the system, which meant more than a cycle had passed without anyone to manage the Grid. Without Jarvis to carry out his will, and Rinzler to enforce it, the Grid would be as chaotic as it had been in the early days of Flynn’s rule. He wouldn’t be surprised if he returned to find the whole place in ruins, with Kevin Flynn standing in the middle, shrugging, and saying, “ _It just sorta happened, man_.”  
  
He wanted his life back. He hadn’t even thought of it as his life before, it was just his purpose, his sole reason for existing—and that was _fine_. Nothing made sense without it. Not to mention dealing with users was much easier to manage in a world where he had most of the power.  
  
A knock at the door startled Clu out of his bitter thoughts, and he jumped up from the floor, an act that nearly sent him tumbling backwards over the chair. “ _What?_ ” he shouted, trying to pull the unwanted extra page off the heel of his shoe. The door opened just enough to let the first half of someone’s face poke into the room.  
  
“I noticed Bradley left for lunch by himself. I thought you might be hungry.” It was the user Clu had met in the garage when Sam first brought them to Encom—Ned… or… Ed… Clu was sure he had called himself Ed. Ed waited a moment, then smiled and let himself into the room. He had a brown paper bag in one hand, and a tray with two drinks in the other. “It’s nothing extravagant. Just a couple of sandwiches.”  
  
Clu watched him as he closed the door and walked over to Alan’s desk, setting the drinks down first, before removing the bag’s contents and spreading them out on the desk. So, he intended to eat together. “What do you want?” Clu asked. He didn’t bother trying to hide his suspicion. No one just offered favors without wanting something in return. Except Sam, but he was an idiot.  
  
“You’re astute,” Ed said, looking over Clu with the barest hint of a smile. “That’s very good. Why don’t we eat first, and then I’ll tell you why I’m here.”  
  
It seemed wiser to refuse, but he _was_ very hungry. Whatever undoubtedly gross offering Ed had brought with him, it was better than nothing. “Fine.” Clu dropped himself into the chair and put a hand out. “Give me one of those,” he commanded. Ed obliged, and Clu tore into the wrapper to get at what turned out to be stale bread and something that tasted both sweet and salty at the same time. He pulled the sandwich away from his mouth and stared at it.  
  
“Peanut butter and jelly. I wasn’t sure what you would prefer, so I stuck with the basics. I hope that’s alright.” Ed had pulled Alan’s chair from behind the desk and moved it around so that he was sitting next to Clu. A warning glare didn’t seem to deter him, if he even noticed it. He reached around behind his back and pulled out a small packet of papers, folded in half lengthwise and wrinkled from repeated handling. Whatever it was, it was obviously of great interest to the user.  
  
“What is that?” Clu said around a mouthful of food. He snatched one of the drinks out from under Ed’s hand just as he reached for it.  
  
Ed recoiled a bit, but managed to pause and compose himself with a cough and a fake smile before continuing. “This is a copy of a research file from our archives. Sam Flynn made a similar copy the other day, according to the checkout log.” He lifted the cover page and pointed to a schematic diagram. Clu recognized it as the laser from Flynn’s dusty office at the arcade. “Are you familiar with this object?”  
  
Clu was prepared to end the conversation right there, but Ed seemed to pick up something that pleased him enough to turn his fake smile into a real one. “Alright,” he said, as he sat back in his chair and folded his hands in his lap. “Why don’t we start with that, and then maybe you can tell me why it isn’t where it’s supposed to be.”


	7. Chapter 7

Alan stood outside the door to his office, staring down at the face of his watch as he ticked off the seconds. _Thirty-four, thirty-five, thirty-six_ … He was going to make Clu wait the full hour, on the dot. Of course, Alan could have taken all day for lunch if he wanted to, now that he was running the place from a top floor corner office with a view most men would kill for, but that didn’t seem very sporting. Program or not, Clu was a human for the time being, and starving her would only make the afternoon miserable for both of them.  
  
Most of his lunch had been spent concocting plans that wouldn’t have been out of place in a college dorm. The corner store down the block had playing cards, and he could feel the weight of the little paper box in his pocket as he shifted and reached forward to grasp the door handle. Mackey, the primping little peacock that he was, had installed smart glass on all the doors and some of the inner walls around the building. It was supposed to impress Encom’s guests, and offer a more hi-tech solution to privacy needs. Alan was sure it had never been intended to conceal the childish grin of a grown man plotting pranks on someone he didn’t like.  
  
“I’m back from lunch,” he said as he stepped into the office. “I brought you some cards. Have you ever played a game called Fifty-two Pickup?”  
  
Clu was sitting in his chair, facing the wide window that looked out over the city. Alan could see one of her arms and both of her legs. She had her shoes off; a quick glance around the room found them discarded in the opposite corner. He could tell from the position of her legs that she was lounging in the chair, slumped down in the seat. For a moment he wondered if she was asleep, but then the chair rotated just a bit. “I’m sure you’re hungry,” he continued. “I brought you that fruit cup.”  
  
“I hope it’s better than a peanut butter anjelly sandwich.”  
  
“I think you mean _and_ jelly,” Alan said. “Here.” He set the cup down on the desk and fished out a plastic spoon from his other pocket. “Are you done with those forms?”  
  
Clu turned the chair around. She was glaring at him. “You mean the papers you tossed on the floor? Yes. They’re right there.” She pointed to the top of the filing cabinet, where a neat stack of folders was perfectly aligned with one corner.  
  
Alan tried to contain his smirk. “Good. When you’re done with your lunch, you can take those around the corner to the supply room. They go in the blue bin with arrows on the front.”  
  
“You’re letting me leave on my own? How uncharacteristically trusting.”  
  
“It’s five feet around the corner, if I lighten the glass on that wall I can watch you walk there and back. Don’t make the mistake of assuming I trust you,” Alan said.  
  
He thought he heard Clu mumble something about users under her breath, but he couldn’t catch it. She hefted herself out of the chair with a beleaguered sigh, and quickly grabbed the fruit cup off the desk, ripping open the lid and tossing it into a trash can as she passed. Alan watched her saunter across the room, tipping her head back to swallow the contents of the cup. A familiar feeling started winding its way around his stomach as she set the empty cup on the cabinet and bent down to retrieve her heels. The fabric of her skirt pulled tight over her backside, accentuating the shape of her backside and highlighting panty lines that made Alan feel guilty just for looking. He shook his head and turned away from the sight of Clu, still bent over, one leg up as she slipped on a heel and threaded a strap through the small silver buckle to secure it. They were cheap shoes that Sam had let her buy against what was clearly his better judgement. Alan felt she would have looked a lot better in the pair he made her return. All at once the mental image of Clu in those black and red heels came floating across Alan’s mind unbidden, and latched on like something with teeth. He loosened his tie and shrugged out of his jacket, tossing it over the back of his chair as he sat down—and promptly fell backwards when the chair came apart.  
  
For a moment he just sat there, still in the chair but also unmistakably on the floor, staring up at the ceiling. It seemed to be the only thing Mackey _hadn’t_ changed when he redecorated the building.  
  
Clu came into view. Her hair hung around her face in a neat frame as she looked down on him with a contented smirk, and suddenly Alan realized _why_ she had been sitting in the chair so strangely.  
  
 _Day one_ , he thought bitterly.  
  
  
_____________  
  
  
  
“So, did you do anything today?” Sam asked Clu as they all settled into the car. He looked up at the rearview mirror when the program didn’t reply right away. “Clu?”  
  
“I learned that everything in Alan’s office is put together with something called a screw,” came the cryptic response. “And that there is no food in your world with enough dignity to keep users from mashing it into a paste and spreading it on bread.”  
  
Sam looked away from the mirror. He wasn’t sure how to respond to that. “That’s, uh… okay. Did you get along with Alan?”  
  
“I think we reached an understanding.”  
  
That was a something of a relief, even if the way Clu said it made Sam wonder if he should call Alan and apologize. “That’s great, because it turns out you’re gonna be spending the rest of the week with him,” he said. Clu was silent again, but this time Sam thought he could almost _hear_ the tantrum brewing. “You okay with that?” he ventured carefully. “Turns out taking over a billion dollar company isn’t as easy as walking in and signing some papers.” When he glanced in the mirror again, Clu was smiling. Sam wasn’t sure he wanted to know why, but at least he wasn’t being berated. Having Clu out of his hair was a blessing and a curse; on the one hand, he didn’t have to worry about him blowing their secret in front of a room full of suits who would probably love to get their hands on the Grid. On the other, he had to worry about finding Clu and Alan dead on the floor, locked in bloody combat. He was mildly encouraged when Clu didn’t immediately object to being thrown back into Alan’s care, and mildly _concerned_ when he didn’t object at all.  
  
Quorra turned around in her seat to address Clu. Sam almost wanted to reach out and stop her, knowing exactly how Clu would respond. He couldn’t figure out why she kept trying. “I discovered a picture of Tron on the wall in the main lobby,” she said. “It’s from a game that Flynn made.”  
  
“I’m sure he would have liked that,” Clu muttered. “He always enjoyed being praised just for performing his duties. I’m not surprised to find you fawning over him like the rest of the half-coded functions stumbling around the Grid, either.”  
  
“Okay,” Sam said, “let’s talk about something else.” He hated the poster of Tron, anyway. He still remembered the story of how long it had taken his father to convince Alan that he should let an artist copy his likeness for the game art. Alan said it was humiliating, seeing his face in a glowing hockey helmet, plastered all over every arcade he passed. Now that he was chairman of the board, Sam thought Alan would demand to have it taken down. He wondered if knowing Tron was real and looked just like him might have changed his opinion on the matter. “Did you talk to anyone besides Alan?” he asked.  
  
“I asked him to send a memo about the Grid to everyone in the building, and then I told a few people on the street at lunch.”  
  
Sam chuckled a little, and then it occurred to him that he should make sure it was a joke. “You’re kidding, right?”  
  
Clu laughed—an actual laugh that Sam was sure came from a place of humor, rather than sadistic joy. Sometimes he couldn’t tell the difference at all.  
  
  
_____________  
  
  
  
Ed leaned back in his computer chair and sighed. Staring at screens was something he could do—he stared at them for a living, and then when he got home, he did it for fun. It was the jumbled up mess of a puzzle laid out before him that had his eyes swimming in his head. He was trying to piece together whatever Sam Flynn was planning, based on the little he had gleaned from his conversation with the prodigal son’s dumb groupie. She couldn’t even tell when he was so obviously fishing for information. It was clear someone had told her to keep her mouth shut about something, but she had no poker face to speak of, and zero control over her emotional reactions. Every single time he asked a question about the Gibbs and Baines laser project, her eyes narrowed and she looked away, like she was trying to think of the right answer. If he talked about Sam Flynn, she lightened up a bit, but her tone was always skeptical, dismissive, even condescending. Questions about Alan Bradley yielded a similar result, but _Kevin_ Flynn… something strange happened when he mentioned that name, and he couldn’t quite put a finger on it.  
  
The proposed purpose of the laser project was quite simple, really. It was a bit like something from a science fiction novel, and the in-house paper trail seemed to indicate that no one outside of the research team actually took it seriously. Yet they managed to secure funding, due in large part to Gibbs’ sway with the board, having founded the company and all. The many, _many_ reports they sent upstairs indicated that they had achieved some small success destroying pieces of their lunch, but nothing truly groundbreaking ever resulted from their research, and eventually it was shut down after Kevin Flynn took control of the company. In the late eighties Doctor Baines was poached by a federally funded R &D lab in Washington D.C., and Old Gibbs retired to a houseboat somewhere on the Florida coast. Lora Baines herself was Alan Bradley’s one-time fiancée, and she was clearly part of the old guard who had stayed behind when Flynn ousted Ed’s father. Obviously loyal to both Bradley and Flynn, she was useless as a source of information. Gibbs was probably already dead.  
  
Ed wanted to dismiss the missing laser, the photocopied paperwork, Sam’s sudden appearance and interest in Encom—he wanted to, but he _couldn’t_. The pieces didn’t quite fit, but the picture they formed almost looked like something bigger, and he was sure if he just moved them around enough eventually he would be able to see what was really going on. If he couldn’t use any of what was in front of him, he had to imagine what was missing.  
  
“What’s not here,” he muttered to himself, fanning through a stack of diagrams.  
  
 _Kevin Flynn_. He was the missing piece of the puzzle. He was connected to everything and everyone else one way or another, and he was the only one whose part in the whole mess Ed couldn’t account for. Why shut down a multimillion-dollar project that your mentor and good friend have poured years of their lives into researching and perfecting? Why not repurpose the whole thing to salvage both the money and time invested? Instead, Flynn had it all moved down to the basement, hidden away where no one would ever bother to look for it again. Then it disappeared. _Flynn_ disappeared.  
  
The man was a lunatic. It was no surprise he ended up snapping or getting himself killed. Ed still remembered the magazine covers, the newspaper articles, all the video games, and Kevin Flynn’s eccentric press conferences every time _his_ company shit out some new innovation. The man wrote a book and everyone acted like he had invented the wheel. Ed couldn’t even recall what the damn thing was about. Something to do with the future of computers— _The Digital Frontier_ , he called it. He kept insisting that there was a whole world to be explored within the computer; a rather transparent metaphor for his dream of an era where digital technology would be woven into the very fabric of everyday life. Oddly prophetic, though the computer age kept speeding on ahead with or without his influence. Then there was his odd obsession with creating video games containing his friends’ likenesses. Flynn didn’t just preach the concept of the world within the computer, he built a whole fantasy around it; games, toys, posters, lunchboxes, comics… he had convinced himself and most of the world between the ages of six and twelve that computer programs were real, fighting epic battles and competing in gladiatorial-style games within every hard drive. Ed was amazed anyone in his generation had made it out of the Tomagotchi craze without having a nervous breakdown.  
  
Flynn would have been beside himself if the digitizing laser actually did what its creators theorized it could do. Why would he cancel a project that would have fulfilled his delusional fantasy if any part of it wasn’t pure bullshit? It seemed like the sort of thing he would have pissed away the company’s profits chasing after.  
  
Moreover, why did Sam want to know about the laser _now?_ There was nothing to be gained from a twenty year old wild goose chase.  
  
Unless it actually worked.  
  
Ed laughed at himself. It was a ridiculous idea—to begin with, the whole project was a farce. There was no science to support any of it, and if Flynn had one moment of clarity and common sense in his life, it had come when he put a stop to the whole damn thing.  
  
Still, it just didn’t line up. Ed picked up one of the worn manila folders that had been stuffed at the bottom of a file box. It contained a copy of the personal statement Flynn made regarding the project’s cancellation: “ _Despite your hard work and sincere dedication…_ ” he read aloud, sneering at the formal tone of the writing. “Clearly someone wrote this for you, Mister Flynn.”  
  
The letter was a page long, and had been signed in ink at the bottom. There was even a P.S. underneath: “ _Besides, they can handle things on their own in there._ ”  
  
  
_____________  
  
  
  
Over the next few days, Clu learned to appreciate some of the simpler aspects of user life that he had previously taken for granted—like having easy access to toilet paper, which Alan denied him on the second afternoon by soaking them all in the sink after Clu glued his tablet to the desk. He also learned why users were so fond of sweet drinks after Alan brought him a cup filled with what turned out to be ice and something called _vinegar_ at lunch. In response, Clu put Alan’s tie through the paper shredder when the user took it off and carelessly left it bundled up in a desk drawer. The following morning, Clu tried to use Alan’s private bathroom—he had planned ahead and brought his own tissues, just in case—only to be sprayed with water when he turned on the sink. A quick inspection found a piece of sticky, silver material over the head of the faucet. Having learned how to use the phone on the second day, Clu reprogrammed all the numbers on Alan’s office phone to call Sam, which caused some chaos during a meeting with Encom’s board of directors. He returned from fetching paper for Alan’s printer later that afternoon to find his lunch fork floating in an upside-down glass of water. That time the attempted prank backfired on Alan, because Clu simply shrugged, picked up the cup, and soaked everything on the desk. It backfired again later when he was forced to clean it all up. After that they had eaten lunch together, and Clu caught himself admiring Alan’s cunning, even if the user was as gullible as the Flynns in almost every other regard.  
  
By Friday morning they were both suspicious of every object and surface in the office, and neither would eat or drink anything that had been within arm’s reach of the other. Alan had come in with a paper shopping bag in one hand, and his briefcase in the other. Clu sat in his own chair, waiting patiently as he watched the user slip out of his long overcoat and set it aside where it could dry. It was pouring rain outside, and Alan’s dark suit was spattered with even darker water marks, as though he had taken a quick run through the storm before entering the building. “They don’t let you park with everyone else?” Clu asked, trying to sound unconcerned. In truth he was extremely curious, because he knew Alan parked in the garage every day. They had taken his car to lunch on Wednesday, before Alan learned that being in a public place wouldn’t stop Clu from taking revenge for sending him all over the building on a quest for something that didn’t actually exist.  
  
“I went by the mall. Here.” Alan set the bag on the desk and slid it over to Clu. “Call it a peace offering.”  
  
They had tricked one another enough to warrant a suspicious glare, but Clu gave it up when his curiosity overtook his wariness. He kept his arms crossed, standing up to lean over and look in the bag; at the bottom was a brown box, with elegant white letters scrawled across the top. Clu couldn’t read what it said from that angle, but he recognized the box almost immediately. He glared at Alan and frowned. If it was another deception, it was subpar, even for him.  
  
“They’re real,” Alan said. “Go ahead and take them out.”  
  
Clu lifted the lid and found that, indeed, the box contained the shoes Sam had made him return at the end of their trip to the mall. “Why?” he asked, still skeptical for many, many reasons. All of them very good reasons, he felt.  
  
“I don’t know if you can take them with you when you go back… home, I suppose you could call it, but you might as well get some use out of them before then.”  
  
The shoes were nice, and Clu enjoyed having something he desired that had been denied to him, but it was the _color_ that he liked most. The stark division between the red and black; the way the lines curved gracefully around the toe and up the bottom, coming together at the back before plunging down into the heel itself. Like the sleek lines of a light cycle. “Can I wear them now?” he asked. He could hear himself, and his own enthusiastic tone was grating, but he was too pleased with the gift to worry about how eager he sounded.  
  
“They’re yours,” Alan said. He waved Clu away from the desk and reached into the bag himself, pulling out the right shoe. “Sit down.”  
  
Clu had no reason to trust Alan Bradley, but he _wanted_ to, and that worried him. Their small war had turned into a game at some point, and he had a feeling Alan enjoyed it as much as he did. It was definitely more stimulating company than he had found in Sam or the Iso—not for lack of effort on his part, of course. He quickly made the decision to give Alan a chance, but kept his guard up as he nodded and sat back down in the chair. When Alan knelt in front of him and started to unbuckle the small strap around his ankle, Clu instantly felt his body react in a way he hadn’t anticipated or commanded. Alan’s fingers were warm, and he made quick work of the little silver catch. He kept one hand under Clu’s heel as he reached back for the new shoe with his other. “You know,” he said suddenly, making Clu jump, “I think this week has been a little crazy for all of us.”  
  
It had been more than just one week for Clu, but he kept silent while Alan slipped the shoe onto his foot.  
  
“I know Sam wants to make everyone happy, but in order to accomplish what he needs to here at Encom, he’s going to have to make some enemies. He knows all about that, but it’s a little different this time.”  
  
Clu couldn’t understand why Alan was telling him any of this. Sam already had enemies—he slept next to one of them whenever Clu couldn’t get the dog to stay at the foot of his bed. So what if he also had enemies at Encom? As long as he kept the system running efficiently, as long as everyone functioned as they were supposed to, it didn’t matter what anyone else thought. It had certainly never mattered to Clu.  
  
“I think he feels like he owes it to his father to look after you. I didn’t understand why, not at first, but I’m beginning to see…” Alan turned Clu’s foot to the side and traced the seam that ran along the top edge of the shoe. “You remind me of him. When he was younger.”  
  
“Sam?”  
  
Alan shook his head. “Kevin.”  
  
  
_____________  
   
  
  
Clu seemed a little more subdued than normal when Sam entered the lobby to retrieve him. He was sitting across from the front desk, glaring at the security guard who was glaring right back until Sam entered. After that the guard couldn’t seem to decide who he disliked more. Sam made a mental note to ask about whatever had happened to get Clu on security’s bad side. He knew from experience that it didn’t take much.  
  
“Alan didn’t come down with you tonight?” he asked. “Is something wrong?”  
  
Clu shrugged, still looking a lot more down than usual. “I know my way around the building,” he said.  
  
Sam had learned enough about Clu in their short time together to know that pushing for details wouldn’t get him anywhere, so he decided to wait and see what happened. They left the building and entered the garage, instantly surrounded by row after row of nearly identical black and silver sedans. There had to be some sort of company policy about buying the same car depending on your pay grade. The only two that stood out were Alan’s, and a Jaguar that had to belong to either Hardington, Mackey, or one of their lawyers. The hood ornament was missing. “That’s weird,” Sam muttered to himself as they passed. “Wonder how that happened.” When they got to Alan’s car, he reached for the door to the driver’s seat, and Clu reached for the one right behind him. “What’re you doing?”  
  
“Getting in the car,” Clu answered flatly.  
  
“You can sit in the front,” Sam said. “Quorra’s not here tonight.” Clu frowned and looked in the back seat. After a moment of waiting Sam shrugged, gestured him in, and got into his own seat without bothering to ask why it mattered. Programs were weird about things. _Clu_ was weird about things.  
  
They drove in silence through most of the city. It was eating at Sam that he couldn’t just ask what was wrong. Quorra would have told him—hell, she would have volunteered the information. He tried concentrating on other topics, and ended up thinking about dinner, instead. Food always seemed like a safe place to turn when he had nothing else to distract the programs. “You hungry?” he asked. “I was thinking we could go out for Chinese.”  
  
“What about the Iso?”  
  
“I dropped Quorra off at the arcade so she could tinker with the laser,” Sam told him. “We’re pretty sure the info Alan got from Lora will let us boost the recharge process. Even if we can’t speed it up this time around, it’ll make things easier the next time.”  
  
Clu grasped the back of Sam’s seat and leaned forward. “The _next time?_ How often are you planning to invade my system once you take your father back?”  
  
That was a question Sam had hoped Clu wouldn’t ask. Any talk about making future trips to the Grid pretty much stomped all over their agreement, and everything they had done or accomplished in the past week and a half hinged on that tentative truce. He didn’t think Clu would revert to the same homicidal menace he had been back on the Grid, but if he thought Sam was going back on his word, things could get ugly. “It’s not that simple, Clu. Dad spent years working on the Grid. He’s not gonna leave it just because me and you shook hands. His life’s work is in there.”  
  
“Stop the car.”  
  
“We’re on the highway, I’m not gonna—”  
  
“ _Stop the car!_ ”  
  
Sam swerved onto the shoulder and slammed on the brakes. Clu crashed into the back of his seat, but obviously not hard enough to cause any injuries; he righted himself and threw open the door, storming out of the car and almost into traffic. Sam went after him with a great deal more caution. “What do you want me to do, Clu? Tell dad ‘Okay, you’re out, just forget the eternity you spent in there and all the work you sacrificed your company and family to accomplish. Let’s go get some fuckin’ ice cream and play catch!’ You can have the system, but you can’t expect him to just abandon it.”  
  
“You lied to me!” Clu shouted against the roar of the highway. “We made a deal!”  
  
“Things change! You should know that, you changed!”  
  
For the second time that week, Sam managed to render Clu speechless. This time he didn’t regret what he’d said, and he had no intention of taking it back, or explaining himself. He was right, and Clu was going to have to live with it. He didn’t like having to break his word, but no solid agreement had actually been struck to begin with. There was no way to ever completely guarantee that the Grid would remain free of users for the rest of its existence. He couldn’t promise that, but he _had_ said Clu would have the Grid, and he was going to do his best to make sure it happened. When he tried to say as much to Clu, he was met with a sock to the jaw that sent him reeling. Even in a user body, the bastard somehow still managed to hit like a freight train. “What the hell!” he shouted, bracing himself against the car while the world stopped spinning. “You think hitting me’s gonna change anything?”  
  
“It made _me_ feel a lot better,” Clu snapped.  
  
Sam held his cheek as he clenched and unclenched his jaw a few times. He would have a bruise there soon enough. “I’m getting sick of this, you know that? You don’t wanna be here, and I don’t want you here. So why don’t we just get through the next week and then at least you’ll never have to see _me_ again.”  
  
The look Clu gave him was pure ice. Sam braced himself for another swing, but it never came. He briefly entertained the notion of taking advantage of the opportunity to give Clu a return shot, but he didn’t want to hit a girl. Even if Clu wasn’t really a girl. And with his luck, some burly truck driver would pass by just in time to see him deck a woman and Sam would end up spending the next month in traction. At least.  
  
“You seemed to want me around the other night.”  
  
“Believe me,” Sam laughed bitterly, “I regret it.” That wasn’t exactly true—he regretted the way things had happened, but he’d meant every word he said, including how much he didn’t want to put a stop to things. He wasn’t going to tell that to Clu, though. “It was a mistake, just like letting you wander around outside the system, just like trying to deal with you now.”  
  
“Then put me back!”  
  
“I can’t!” Sam shouted. He knew he must have looked like a lunatic, throwing his arms around and screaming on the side of the road, but he didn’t care anymore. “If I could get rid of you, I would. Trust me.”  
  
Clu glared daggers at Sam with his mouth drawn in a flat line. “So do it,” he said.  
  
  
_____________  
  
  
  
 _“How?” Clu asked. Alan glanced up to find her staring at him, a look of genuine, open curiosity on her face._  
  
 _He struggled for a moment, trying to think of the right words. Something that wouldn’t sound like he was just patronizing her. “Kevin was always challenging me—not just me,” he corrected, “everyone around him. It’s hard to handle so much power and responsibility, but he had good intentions, and he did well enough with it. He just had trouble juggling everything at once.” Of course, at the time Alan hadn’t known about Kevin’s secret project. He just thought running Encom and trying to raise a family had pushed his friend to the limit of his already short focus, but he still seemed willing to keep pushing ahead. It was why he never really believed that Kevin had run away. The Kevin Flynn he knew might have been a flighty oddball, he might have had trouble keeping his mind on more than one or two projects at a time, but he never gave up. He never threw his hands in the air and said he couldn’t do it. He just came at the problem from a different angle. If it didn’t work, he_ made _it work._  
  
 _Clu withdrew her foot from his hand and set it down on the floor. “Then he failed Encom, too.”_  
  
 _“What? No, he didn’t fail the company. He didn’t really fail anyone, he—he made mistakes. But Encom was doing well, and it would have continued to thrive, even if there were some hiccups along the way.”_ If anyone failed Encom _, Alan thought to himself,_ it was me _. “Kevin never gave up on anything, or anyone. He always found a way to make it work, in time.”_  
  
 _Something about his words seemed to unsettle Clu; she folded her arms under her chest and withdrew a bit, looking confused and frustrated all at once. Alan couldn’t help but think of Kevin yet again, and the rare times he had seen the man open, all his vulnerabilities and doubts laid out for anyone to see. “I’m sorry if I’ve upset you,” he said. “We can talk about something else if you want.”_  
  
 _She was quiet for a moment, and then she looked at him again, some of her armor back in place, concealing the weak spots. “Tell me more about what Flynn was like.”_  
  
Alan had a hot towel wedged under the back of his neck. He was sitting in an armchair in his living room, both feet up on the coffee table. His suit jacket had been discarded on the couch across from him, and his shoes were somewhere kicked off to the side. He wanted to take off his socks, too, but it would have required more effort than he was willing to expend at that particular moment. It had been a long day. Things almost went well with Clu; they spent the bulk of the afternoon talking, getting to know one another, and Alan thought he’d made some real progress with the program. Then at the end it all started to unravel again, and he felt like he was watching an open window slide shut. There was no reason _why_ that he could tell. She just sealed herself up, walled over the exposed nerves he had uncovered during the course of their long conversation, and it was right back to square one again.  
  
He was about to get up and drag himself into a hot shower when he heard the doorbell. He lifted his arm and checked the time on his watch: close to nine already. He hadn’t even sent Clu down to wait for Sam until six, and then it had taken him about forty-five minutes to get everything in order and get out of the building. Traffic was predictably terrible, which set him back even further. As he pulled himself up out of the armchair he wondered what else the day could possibly have in store for him.  
  



	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The paragraph formatting on this might be weird, because it was written on a different program than I normally use. For some reason double spacing turned into triple spacing.

The first thing Alan noticed as he awoke was a sharp pain radiating out from his lower back, a stiffness in his hips, and a kink in his neck that didn’t hurt as long as he remained perfectly still. Unfortunately for him, he could already hear his new house guest stirring in the bed above. Even if he had wanted to sacrifice the rest of his joints for the sake of his neck, he had a feeling that was no longer an option. “Good morning,” he grumbled hoarsely when Clu’s head appeared over the side of the bed. “Sleep well?”

“Yes.”

“Glad to hear it. Let me talk myself into getting up, and I’ll make us something for breakfast. Just a few minutes.” A few minutes was a modest estimate; men his age were not meant to sleep on floors. Ever.

Clu disappeared again, and Alan heard her shuffling around in the bedding. “You should’ve slept up here with me,” she said.

Alan shook his head, and then immediately regretted it. “I explained all that last night.” He had tried, anyway. Clu seemed oblivious to his discomfort when she suggested sharing the bed, and Sam’s insistence that Clu was a polite bedfellow didn’t make things any less awkward. An inquiring glance at Sam resulted in a reassuring shake of his head and a look that left Alan reasonably sure nothing had occurred between the two of them. It was a rather hypocritical concern, he felt, given his own thoughts on the subject. Thoughts he wasn’t proud of, but wasn’t going to deny himself after twenty years of living alone. “What do you want for breakfast?”

“I don’t care,” Clu said. “I just want to eat.”

“Alright—get out of the bed on the other side,” Alan added hastily when he saw a leg slide over the edge and dangle above his chest. “I’d appreciate it if you didn’t step on me again.”

“I forgot you were there.” Her leg disappeared, and the bed sagged a bit under her weight as she moved over to exit on the far side, instead. Alan listened to her pad across the floor and shut the bathroom door before he hefted himself up from the couch cushions he had thrown together to form a makeshift bed. They weren’t much better than bare hardwood.

His thoughts turned to breakfast. He threw on a T-shirt and grabbed his glasses off the dresser on his way out of the room. Clu had turned on the sink, and he could hear her humming to herself as she brushed her teeth. Taken out of context, the scene was oddly domestic, and he lingered in the doorway to listen for a moment, having nearly forgotten what it was like to share his space with another human being—or at least the next best thing. Eventually the humming stopped, and Alan left her to get ready without an uninvited observer.

Bright shafts of sunlight were spilling across the kitchen counter when he entered the room, illuminating the mess Clu had left the night before when she tried to make herself a snack. Alan couldn’t identify what the intended recipe had actually been; the marble countertop was strewn with potato chips, parmesan cheese, lime wedges, and something that looked like paprika. He had a feeling she was trying to make nachos, but obviously failed in almost every way possible. He cleared a space and started working on something a little more edible for the two of them. Clu entered a few minutes later, dressed in a striped tank top and jeans that Alan thought looked like they might belong to Sam. He wasn’t sure Sam knew he had loaned them to the program, though. “What are you making?” she asked. She aimed a finger at the egg-soaked bread sitting in the middle of the pan, and without thinking Alan slapped her arm away from the hot surface. “Don’t touch me!” she snapped, jabbing him in the side with her elbow.

“I’m sorry,” he said quickly. “I didn’t want you to burn yourself.”

“I’m not an idiot, user, I know pans are hot,” she scoffed, but her posture relaxed and she moved in close again to peer over his shoulder. “So what is it?”

“French toast. Have you ever had it at Sam’s?”

She shook her head. “I’ve had smaller toast. In milk.”

“That’s a cereal, and it’s not toast,” Alan said. “Watch me, I’ll show you how to make this.” He cracked a second egg and dropped it into a bowl, whisking the contents and mixing them together with the rest. After flipping the bread already cooking in the pan, he turned and plucked another piece out of the bag, dropped it into the egg, and then flipped it over to coat both sides. “It’s easy.”

“Let me try.” Clu pushed him out of the way with her arm and tried to mimic his actions, succeeding up to the point where the bread was dropped into the pan: it hit the side and folded over on itself, creating a soggy lump that split in half when she tried to correct the mistake. When that happened she reached down and tried to piece it back together, only to burn her fingers and leap back with a pained, angry hiss. In a burst of rage she shoved the pan across the stovetop and gripped her burned fingers tightly against her chest.

“Here, _here_ ,” Alan said, reaching for the faucet to turn on the cold water. “Put your fingers in there, quick.” He held her arm out and pushed the reddened skin under the running water, forcing her to stay there long enough to prove he was only trying to help. He couldn’t recall any part of Kevin that had ever been so _paranoid_. “Better?”

Clu nodded grudgingly and kept her hand under the water when Alan let go. “Will the damage be permanent?”

“It’ll heal,” he replied.

“That was an accident,” she said. “I miscalculated. 

Alan nodded and continued making breakfast. “I know. It happens.”

He could see Clu eyeing him suspiciously from the corner of his eye. She stood up straighter and warned sternly, “Don’t mock me. 

“I’m not,” Alan reassured her. “It’s a risk that comes with cooking. Don’t worry about it.”

The idea of not dwelling on every detail seemed completely foreign to Clu. She turned back to the water and watched it pour over her hand for a minute longer, eventually shutting it off and wrapping her fingers in a hand towel. “I want to try again,” she said after a short pause.

Alan turned the spatula in his palm and presented her with the handle. “Go for it.”

 

______________

 

“What do you intend to do with them?”

Ed turned to regard the wispy skeleton of a man with a look he normally reserved for bums. A witty response fought its way to the tip of his tongue, but he held it back. He actually needed this man’s permission to access the backup 511 servers, and lacking any actual authorization to access the materials he needed, sweet-talking himself into the basement was his only other option. He recognized the man’s face, but couldn’t place his name; one of the old guard—another Flynn-era relic shuffled off somewhere he couldn’t do any harm, and probably forgotten by everyone but the payroll department. “It’s for Sam,” he said, purposely stuttering between one half of the sentence and the other to make himself sound harmless. “Sam Flynn? We’re putting together a page on the company site dedicated to his father.” It sounded like the kind of sentimental bullshit the junior Flynn would come up with. If not now, eventually. “I need some of Kevin Flynn’s old project data to show what he was working on. You know,” he paused again, “to give people an idea of where his genius really began.”

He wanted to gag.

“Oh,” the old man nodded and frowned thoughtfully. “I see. Well, I suppose Flynn put these down here, his boy would know what he’d want done with them. Just be careful, make sure to sign your name in the log book there, and don’t break anything while you’re down here.”

“Absolutely.”

No one would question why a programmer wanted to see the old server data. Especially now that Flynn was taking over again, they would be more concerned with the rumors of project cutbacks and layoffs during the restructuring. The only person who would ever think twice about it was Bradley, but now that he had a top-floor office and his own playmate secretary, Ed doubted if Kevin Flynn’s stand-in would bother wandering down to mingle with the unwashed unless he had to. Bradley hadn’t tasted that kind of power and influence since the early nineties. If his long lunches and notable absences from meetings with the BOD were any indication, he was already settling back into the life of an overpaid executive under the Flynn banner.

It took most of an hour and two trips upstairs to get more hardware, but eventually he managed a crude interface with the now-isolated 511 system. Somewhere in one of the drives would be the data recorded during the laser tests, and code that he could decompile and comb for clues that might tell him what the laser _really_ meant to Kevin Flynn, and more recently, his son.

 

_____________

 

They finished breakfast without incident. If asked to describe it, Alan would have said it was a rather pleasant experience, apart from a few light burns and some confusion regarding syrup. He didn’t mind having Clu as a house guest, at least as long as she refrained from stepping on him in the middle of the night. His only real regret was that they hadn’t come to terms with one another sooner. There was so much of Kevin in Clu; his capricious moods; the way he latched on and refused to abandon an idea until he had forced it to make sense; even his insatiable curiosity—it was all there. At the same time, he felt like he was handling a live grenade rather than a decent facsimile of his friend, and for the life of him he couldn’t put it down. He tried to tell himself that he had grown to appreciate Clu’s personality: her brusque charm and unflattering honesty, rather than the way she made his stomach flip when he watched her stomp down the hall in high heels and a skirt, or smile at him with that vaguely dangerous grin when she finally found the humor in a joke. In the end he settled on something between the two, and accepted that his attraction was a little more than base lust. Not that it mattered either way.

He left her down in the kitchen after breakfast, with the promise that they would do something in the city if she managed to clean up her mess from the night before by the time he came back downstairs. He went up to the bedroom to get changed, thinking it would be fast, but ten minutes later he was still trying to choose between a light blue button-down and a red polo that he hadn’t worn in about six years. Eventually the blue shirt won, and he tossed the polo into the hamper with every intention of donating it when he found the time. A soft knock at the door startled him just as he was finishing up the buttons on his cuffs. “Yeah?”

“I’m done,” Clu said from the other side of the door. She sounded very proud of herself. “It wasn’t much of a challenge.”

Alan chuckled. “I didn’t think it would be. You can come in.”

She opened the door and stepped into the room, and he could see her absently rubbing at the lingering burn on her fingers. He had told her to stop at least a dozen times already, but she didn’t even seem to notice she was doing it. “I thought we could go somewhere you hadn’t been—which is a lot of places, I know,” he said. “You don’t have art on the Grid, do you?”

“Of course not.”

Given Kevin’s feelings on the subject, Alan couldn’t say he was surprised. “I’d like to take you to a gallery. I think you might enjoy it.”

He received another suspicious glare, and then Clu asked, “Why?” as though Alan had suggested taking her for a surprise lobotomy.

“Because people enjoy art,” he said. “Sometimes.” He was still struggling with the last button on his right cuff while he answered her. “Maybe you’ll find something to take back to the Grid.”

“I have a few things in mind already,” Clu said.

Alan could hear the smile in her voice, but he was too busy doing battle with a tiny piece of plastic to give it much notice. He exhaled sharply and tugged his cuff back into place when it slipped down around his wrist. “You might even decide you want to stay,” he added absently.

When the button finally surrendered it was such a relief that Alan actually cheered quietly. He shook out his sleeves and straightened up, unexpectedly finding himself facing a very enigmatic gaze from Clu. “Did I say something wrong?” he asked.

“No,” she answered with a coy, knowing smile. She slipped past him, _accidentally_ brushing against his arm on her way past and sending a prickle of excitement skipping across his nerves. His pulse quickened and his breath caught on an unspoken objection as he twisted around to grab her arm. His grip stopped her mid-stride. For a moment they just stared at one another, and then Alan swung his arm back and pulled her in front of him, stepping forward and pushing her back against the bedroom door. It shut under her weight, and he followed her until their bodies were pressed together. He could see the blush rise in her cheeks, the dark dilation in her eyes, and he felt an answering heat under his fingers where he still held her arm. He leaned in to kiss her, and their lips came together hard when she shot forward to meet him. Her free hand clawed at his collar, slipping down below his shirt and then up, around his neck, into his hair. He grunted against the pain of her nails when she accidentally scratched him, and readjusted his hold to pin both of her arms against the door. Lacking free hands to touch him, Clu arched her body to feel more of his, and then wrapped a leg around one of his to pull him closer. He could feel her toes curling against him as she slid her foot up and down the length of his calf. It was fast. It was _gloriously fast_.

With a quick tug he unfastened the button of her pants and pulled the zipper, pushing the denim jeans down around her thighs and sending her white cotton panties with them. She stepped out of the legs without prompting, giving Alan a full, unobstructed view as he leaned back to appreciate one very impressive feat of programming. He could have taken her right there. Pulled off those ridiculous pants that she had obviously ‘borrowed’ from Sam, pushed her up on the door and wrapped her legs around his waist. He wanted to, but he also wanted more. He leaned back and nodded over his shoulder. “Come here.”

With one of her wrists still encircled by his fingers, he led her over to the bed, and sat himself down on the edge before pulling her into his lap facing the standing mirror along the wall. Her knees dangled over his as he spread both their legs apart, and she stared unabashedly at the sight of her own naked body. After a moment to appreciate her naked curiosity, Alan put a hand on her arm and lifted it up over his head until she caught on and wrapped it around his shoulder. He leaned down to mouth at the curve of her breast, tonguing the shirt where her nipple peeked through the fabric. Clu gasped in pleasure, and Alan rewarded her by snaking his other arm around her back until his hand could slip between her legs, fingers sliding gently over her mound and into the warmth and wetness below. He teased her from both ends, letting her watch while he worked her body with practiced skill. “Lift your shirt up,” he prompted, and Clu rushed to obey. With his free hand, Alan hooked a finger over the top of her bra and tugged it down to expose the nipple he had been teasing. His tongue swept across the tip and Clu shuddered in his lap. He could hear her breathing heavily through her mouth, and when he looked up she was still staring intently at her own reflection. “Do you like this?” he asked. His own voice was rough and starting to sound embarrassingly needy. “Does it feel good?”

“Yes,” Clu breathed. She closed her eyes for a moment, and Alan would have thought she was in pain if not for the way she sighed and wiggled in his lap. “Fuck my pussy,” she pleaded, and Alan froze.

“ _What?_ ”

“What?” Clu echoed.

“Where did you learn that?”

She made a frustrated sound and shrugged. “The TV.”

“What the hell is he letting you two watch over there?” No wonder she was so curious. “Just enjoy yourself, don’t worry about what to say or do. Okay?”

Clu nodded at him. “Okay.”

Satisfied that there wouldn’t be any more scripted interruptions, Alan pulled his arm out from behind her back and nudged her off his lap to the side. “Lie on the bed,” he instructed. She listened yet again, and distantly he noted that it was probably a record for the two of them. Once she was nestled on her back amidst the covers he lifted her shirt, prompting her to lift her arms so he could pull it all the way off while he knelt over her legs. She left her arms draped across the pillow above her head while he tossed the shirt aside. When that was out of the way he placed both palms on her collar, slowly drawing his hands down until he could cup each breast, kneading the soft skin for a moment before continuing. He touched her stomach and she shivered, and then he had to move off her legs as his hands followed the gentle curve of her hips, sliding up and over each thigh and down to her knees. “Remember what I said about just enjoying it,” he reminded her, before pulling her legs apart and leaning down to place a long, slow kiss on the inside of one thigh. Clu drew in a breath and shifted her hips nervously, but Alan kept moving; he licked and kissed his way down the soft skin of her thigh, spreading her legs even more as he moved toward his goal. He dragged his lips over the hollow between her leg and her abdomen, and then back down, edging closer and closer, but never quite making it there. Clu made wordless, desperate sounds, but Alan teased mercilessly. He let a warm puff of air ghost across her sensitive skin, then moved away again only to return just as Clu’s needy sounds and excited shivers subsided. Finally he made his way straight down the center, and when his lips touched her mound he paused, looking up to find her staring down at him with an expression so intense and needy he almost felt bad for making her wait so long. Her brow was furrowed tight and she caught her lower lip between her teeth—and then his tongue dove between her wet folds, and the sound she made set his blood on fire. He held her hip with one hand and pinned one of her thighs down with the other, riding out every hard shudder and reflexive kick as he worked her. He had never been with anyone who responded so sensitively, and the way she moved to his every touch made him want to rip off his own clothes and feel her body under his, moving with him, shuddering and gasping as he drove into her over and over.

He felt a hand on the back of his head and fingers sliding through his hair. Clu bucked hard each time Alan’s tongue pressed against her clit, and he could hear her trying to speak, only to let it all out in a wordless sigh as he relented and gave her a moment to catch her breath. “How’s that?” he asked, knowing just how cruel it was to ask her anything at that moment. The small part of him that still mourned his favorite tie felt justly avenged.

Clu surprised him by pushing down on his head, demanding, “ _Keep going!_ ”

The urgency and the desire pounding through his body had him clawing at the belt around his waist, trying to tear it off when he couldn’t manage the buckle with one hand. He was groaning against Clu’s slick skin, so desperate to rid himself of the cloth confining his burning skin and sink himself deep inside the gorgeous woman lying in his bed, writhing and begging for more. He finally pulled away long enough to sit up and undo the belt buckle, sliding the whole thing out in one tug and throwing it across the room. His pants came undone with minimal effort, and then he had his cock in hand, pulling it out and stroking it as he looked down on Clu, open and waiting for him. He dropped down onto his hands and knees over her, still holding himself with one hand as he nudged her thighs apart and moved into position. The head of his cock had just barely made contact when he heard his name—spoken quietly as a question.

He looked up at Clu. “Do you want me to wear the shoes?” she asked.

 _Too smart for your own good,_ he thought to himself. “Absolutely.” When Clu tried to sit up he shook his head. “Next time.” He settled himself between her legs again and pressed the head of his cock in place, nudging forward just enough to test the waters. When she hissed and pushed against his chest he stopped. “What’s wrong, am I hurting you?”

“Yes,” she said, frowning. “Are you doing it wrong?”

Alan laughed and shook his head. “I think I still remember how this is supposed to work. But I guess there’s a first time for programs, too.” He reached up and brushed his fingers through her hair, smiling. “Just relax, it may hurt a little. I’ll go slowly.” Clu nodded, but she didn’t look convinced. Alan pushed forward, pausing again when she whined quietly and wrapped her arms around his shoulders. Then a little more—and a little more, inch by inch until he was seated to the base, his entire length wrapped in her soft, wet heat. He took a moment to let her adjust before he pulled back again, and then he was thrusting, drawing himself out almost to the tip, and driving back in as deep as he could go. Clu’s arms were tight around him, and her legs were drawn up along his sides; he leaned down and kissed the side of her neck as he moved inside her, muttering soothing words and encouragement as she slowly unwound around him. Then she was moaning, and the sound caught in her throat with each thrust. He moved faster, grinding his hips against hers, and Clu had no trouble keeping up. She pulled at his shirt, fingernails scraping across the fabric, leaving stinging trails across Alan’s skin with each pass.

He tasted her sweat when he licked her neck, and he could feel her legs tremble gently. When she came it was fast and quiet, obvious only in the small spasms that shook her body. Alan looked down to find her eyes shut and her mouth open as she rode out the bursts of raw sensation. He could feel her squeezing him, and then all at once she was done—her legs dropped to the side and she fell back against the pillow, sated, sweaty, and thoroughly debauched. The sight alone was worth any reservations Alan may have had. He sat up and lifted one of her legs until he could angle himself just right; Clu gasped and arched off the mattress, suddenly wild-eyed and alert again. “What—”

“Trust me,” Alan repeated. He grabbed her other leg, holding each one under the knee as he bent her back and began thrusting harder, driving into her and making the bed creak in protest. Clu was clutching at his arms and watching him intently as he fucked her toward a second orgasm, her breasts bouncing and each breath punctuated by the slap of his skin against hers. He could feel himself getting close. He had no intention of stopping until he came, even if she finished first, again. It was building, a coil winding tight inside him and ready to release if he could just let go…

Clu lifted her head from the pillow and immediately tossed it back again as she came for the second time, with Alan close behind. He kept moving, kept pumping his cock into her while he came, until, with one final, shuddering thrust, he was spent. He pulled out and sat back for a moment, letting Clu’s legs fall back down to the mattress. When he finally regained enough of his faculties to move, he dropped to his hands and knees over her for the second time, only to then roll onto his side on the bed beside her. They lay there for what felt like hours, panting in mutual exertion. His shirt was ruined. It felt better than it had any right to; Alan couldn’t recall the last time he had let loose and just made love to a woman until neither one of them could remember how to breathe. Decades. Short-term flings and one night stands were fine, but they couldn’t compare to _this_ —to the feeling of being with someone he lusted after, who challenged him, and met his attraction with equal passion. He lifted a hand and set it down on her thigh. Her skin felt like it was on fire. “Do you want something to drink?” he asked, noting his own excessive thirst. When Clu didn’t answer right away, he turned to look, finding her staring up and the ceiling with an expression of intense thought fixed on her face. “What’s wrong?”

“Did I do it right?” she asked, turning to face him. “If you want to try again…”

Alan let her question fade on its own before giving his reply. “Clu, I don’t think you could have done it wrong if you wanted to. And I don’t think I could go again right this minute even though I _do_ want to.”

 

_____________

 

Ed slouched against the door of his apartment. He had his jacket in one hand, and its sleeves dragged uselessly on the floor. His other hand had been occupied by his briefcase, but he let it slip from his fingers as soon as he was inside. He had felt like someone punched him when he finally mustered up the strength to pull himself out of the archives—a feeling he didn’t expect to experience again so long after high school. He put a hand against his face and sighed. When he glanced at the clock it read a little after eleven. Maybe. He couldn’t tell the exact time, because in a moment of truly inspired brilliance he had purchased a wall clock with nothing to indicate where any of the minutes actually _were_. After a moment of squinting he lifted his cell phone and checked the time there, instead. It was after eleven. Like it mattered anyway. It was _late_. He had spent a grand total of twenty-eight hours in the basement archives over the weekend, with one short, hour long break to get stood up by one of the low-level code monkeys who worked for Encom back when Flynn was still a programmer. On the phone the man had sounded jumpy, paranoid, questioning everything Ed asked and then abruptly ending the call with nothing but a vague plan to meet for lunch and discuss some of what was going on shortly before Flynn’s takeover. It shouldn’t have been a surprise that he failed to show, but it was a wasted hour that Ed could have used literally anywhere else.

He didn't want to believe that there had been more to Flynn's wild prophecies—his visions of a future oddly reminiscent of a science fiction novel that belonged in the pages of a pulp novel, rather than behind the podium of a press conference. Things seemed upside down. Memories filled his mind; a childhood spent steadfastly trying to avoid the games and toys, cereal boxes and lunch pails and sneakers emblazoned with neon lines that glowed blue and white in the darkness. All he wanted to do was sleep, but he couldn't stop thinking. Flynn had done something with that laser, and what the data revealed to Ed didn't make sense. Not from any perspective that a sane man would consider. The would-be father of the digital era had taken great pains to cover his tracks, but he wasn't perfect, and neither was his work. The question was, what happened to him, and did it have anything to do with the project he had done his best to bury? Did Sam's sudden interest in the laser mean he knew something about his father's off-the-books project? Where did Clu and the other girl figure into this? Bradley had to know something about it, but it would be a cold day in Hell when Ed got anything out of _that_ old man. And of course he had never even spoken to the other girl, who remained glued to the younger Flynn's side like a wispy little goth limpet. The only in he had was with Clu. An in that he might be able to exploit, if he asked the right questions.

 

_____________

 

“How did you know about the shoes?” Alan asked absently as he traced his fingers across the outline of Clu’s shoulder blades. They were lying in bed, with Clu draped across Alan’s chest, neither one in any rush to get up and move around. After their day hopping art museums, followed by a Sunday morning spent with Alan trying in vain to help Clu appreciate the beauty of what she disdainfully referred to as _the grotesque chaos and creeping sprawl of nature_ , they had returned to the house, and almost immediately to the bed. There were no regrets; Clu had learned the joys of being on top—repeatedly, in fact—and Alan was quickly growing fond of having someone in his bed who liked to wake him up with her lips wrapped around his cock. He felt nineteen again. Just with more sex and less Tolkein.

It was getting close to midnight, and they were both finally starting to feel the consequences of a day spent walking around parks and having vigorous sex on various surfaces around the house. Alan turned back from the bedside clock and gave Clu a gentle nudge to prompt an answer.

“You kept staring at them,” she grumbled against his chest. “I watched a lot of TV at Sam’s, I know what that means.”

Alan coughed to cover a laugh, and nodded thoughtfully. “I suppose that makes sense. You really shouldn’t base your understanding of sex on porn, though. It isn’t real sex.”

Clu leaned up on her elbow and looked down at him. “What’s not real about it? The execution is slightly different—less procedural, but the technical details are correct. Obviously you have to factor in variables that are—” She stopped herself suddenly.

“Hmm?” Alan hummed curiously. “What about the variables?”

Clu shrugged and set her head back down on his chest, pulling one of the blankets over herself and settling in comfortably. “It’s not really important,” she muttered.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some of this chapter was edited on 6/30/13 to remove a bit of Ed's part in the story. I felt it was a little too obvious, and I have more faith in my readers to figure out what is going on than that kind of writing allows.


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please note that the chapter before this was updated as recently as 9/2/13.

“You’re in a good mood,” Sam observed cheerfully. “How’d things go with Clu this weekend?” He ripped the top off six sugar packets at once, dumping them into a cup of black coffee. “He finally figure out how to keep his mouth shut?”  
  
Alan cleared his throat and tried not to fidget with his sleeves—Sam couldn’t have known what happened with Clu, but he was his father’s son, and it made Alan nervous. Kevin would have known the second Alan walked into the room. He had always seemed to have a disturbingly specific sixth sense when it came to the sort of thing most polite people didn’t discuss their friends. Though it was possible he might not have guessed that Alan had spent the weekend plowing his digitally-born, re-gendered clone brother… son. Alan snatched a cup from the stack and reached for the coffee pot. “Yeah, it was fine.”  
  
“So I guess everyone thinks I’m gonna fire half the company,” Sam said, ignoring Alan’s hesitation. “I’m sorta tempted to let that rumor keep circulating, but I don’t want someone suing me when the eighty year old mailroom guy has a heart attack.” When his joke failed to stick, he continued. “The lawyers painted that happy scenario, by the way, I don’t think anyone is that paranoid yet.” He paused, still stirring the sugar into his coffee. “I should fire that prick, Dillinger. I should fire _just_ him.”  
  
“Edward Dillinger is good at his job, even if he has the kind of personality that invites a cheap shot now and then,” Alan muttered.  
  
“If you mean a shot with a fist, then yeah. I don’t think he’s irreplaceable, though. Hell, Q could pick up programming in a week. We could just slip her in behind his desk.”  
  
The coffee was far too hot, but Alan’s throat still felt painfully dry. He took a quick sip and instantly regretted it. “I think,” he began, sucking in air to cool his burning tongue, “that she would look terrible in thick-framed glasses and a vest, but you might be right about her aptitude, programming in her blood—so to speak.”  
  
“The beard wouldn’t work at all, but I don’t think anyone would really notice the difference otherwise,” Sam mused.  
  
“The question is, would she want to do this kind of work? Try to remember what that would imply, Sam. She’d be playing god.”  
  
Sam considered it for a moment before nodding. He leaned back against the counter and looked around the break room. Alan took the opportunity to dump his unwanted coffee into the sink. “I bet Clu would love it,” Sam said suddenly.  
  
Alan froze. “What?”  
  
“You know,” Sam cocked his head thoughtfully, “if he stayed.”  
  
“Why—why would she stay?”  
  
Sam shrugged again, more dramatically this time, like he had no idea why he was even talking about it. “I dunno, just saying. If something happened and he couldn’t go back.” He turned and squinted at Alan. “You know, it’s really weird that you keep calling Clu a _she_. Just say he. Makes it much easier.”  
  
“Makes what easier?” Alan asked.  
  
Sam emptied his own cup into the sink before tossing it in the trashcan. “Remembering that a body like that doesn’t come without a catch. You’ll understand the first time he wanders out of the shower bare-ass naked.” He gave Alan an affectionate slap on the arm and a smile that said he had _no_ idea what had happened over the weekend. Alan nearly collapsed as Sam turned and marched out of the break room, complaining to himself about meetings and paperwork, and the soul-sucking legion of lawyers Encom kept on hand specifically, he apparently believed, to make his life miserable.  
  
  
_____________  
  
  
Part of Sam wanted to apologize to Alan, offer to drive over and pick up Clu and his minimal collection of personal effects, and then take the program home. Or rather, to what had somehow become his home in the short time since the trip into and back out of the portal. He couldn’t stop hearing Quorra in his head, rattling around like a loose ball bearing every time he turned a corner. He had been hard on Clu, harder than he deserved that night. If the situation had been reversed, Sam couldn’t say he would have reacted any better, given the implications. He thought some of his own anger might have stemmed from the continual, burning humiliation he felt over their failed one-night stand in the TV room, but he would never admit it. He didn’t even like _thinking it_. If Clu had pushed just a little harder, if he had faltered for just a second, he would have gone for it. He would have screwed Clu through the couch and down onto the floor, and the fallout from their argument on the highway probably would have seemed like a picnic in comparison to the morning after. He couldn’t face his father with something like that on his shoulders, and he knew _that_ was the last thing holding him back; the deciding ounce of restraint that kept him from making an enormous mistake he had really, really wanted to make.  
  
Sam’s shame and the resulting frustration were his own problems. Clu didn’t deserve to have that thrown in his face, even if he deserved it for plenty of other crimes. At least that was what Sam kept trying to tell himself. He couldn’t quite convince his ego that he had been totally wrong the night he dropped Clu in Alan’s lap.  
  
With the taste of subpar coffee still strong in the back of his throat, Sam swallowed back his insecurities and reservations, and put on the mask of indifference he had adopted since the first signature he swept across the page on day one. Clu and Alan could be sorted out later. They hadn’t killed each other yet, and the program wasn’t even in the building at the moment. Sam had time to make up for all those other mistakes before they made the swap to get his father back. Until then, he had a company to lasso.  
  
“Another busy day?” came the familiar voice of the last person Sam wanted to see that morning. “Mr. Flynn,” Dillinger added belatedly. “I see you’re dressed to impress, as usual.”  
  
Sam looked down at himself; he was in jeans and a faded Klondike Bar T-shirt, and though neither of his socks actually matched, Dillinger had no way of knowing that. “Yeah, well, when you get to decide who stays and who has to pack their shit into a sad little cardboard box, they’re a little more relaxed about the dress code. Is that today’s paper?” Sam asked, gesturing to the folded newspaper in Ed’s hand. “I don’t suppose it’s the classifieds.”  
  
Dillinger smiled slowly. “I haven’t received my pink slip yet,” he said with a chuckle. “But then I haven’t checked my mail today.”  
  
“Relax, Dillinger, you’re still gainfully employed. For now. How’s your dad?”  
  
Ed’s smile disappeared as though Sam had reached out and snatched it right off his face. He took a deep, measured breath, and straightened up. “Good,” he answered sharply. “I’ll let him know you asked. We keep in touch; it’s nice.”  
  
“Awesome. Well, have a great day in the cubicle farm. I’ve got a meeting.” Sam shoved his hands in his pockets and swung one leg around, turning toward the elevator and preparing to stroll away as though he didn’t want to turn and leap onto Dillinger with both fists drawn.  
  
Behind him, Ed made a sound somewhere between amusement and arrogant disbelief. “I have an office,” he corrected.  
  
Sam spun around again, walking backwards. “Do you?” He gave Dillinger his best ‘fuck you’ smile and turned back to the elevators.  
  
 _Prick_.  
  
  
_____________  
  
  
  
Clu’s hand hovered over the phone. He knew Alan’s number at the office, and the familiar warm ache building low in his body couldn’t seem to be satisfied. He had even tried the same method he’d been using since the first night he stumbled onto what Sam called _channels that weren’t meant for programs_. If Alan had brought him to the office, they could have had sex—they could have had sex on the desk, which suddenly seemed like a very appealing place to lie naked with Alan wedged firmly between his legs. He hadn’t expected to enjoy it so much, but Alan was very, _very_ good at it. Lacking any frame of reference, of course, Clu couldn’t actually assert that claim to anyone else, but he felt that their multiple experiences together warranted a decent amount of praise.  
  
Still, he had been asked not to call unless it was an emergency. And as urgently as Clu felt he needed Alan at that moment, he had a feeling the user would disagree with his assessment of the situation as an emergency. Not that he cared what Alan thought.  
  
He was passing the time teaching himself to cook, instead, and taking his personal frustration out on helpless foodstuffs. Displaying enough trust to make Clu feel justly proud of himself, Alan had given his blessing to use the kitchen, with the understanding that any fires started would probably put a serious dent in their plans to restore him to the Grid as quickly as possible. Regardless, Clu felt he’d had enough firsthand experience with the stove to avoid burning himself or any flammable parts of the house without incentive. He was only a little surprised when Alan agreed. He told himself that the extra caution he was using as he slid silver pans onto the glass stovetop and carefully measured ingredients had less to do with proving to Alan that he could be responsible and do a good job, and more to do with proving that he had mastered the most basic user task of feeding himself. And if Alan found his cooking appealing, that was just a bonus.  
  
He’d also been handed an apron, which seemed oddly superfluous, but something about the way Alan eyed him when he wore it made Clu uncharacteristically willing to comply with the strange request.  
  
He had a sneaking suspicion that Alan had a lot of interests he didn’t share with others.  
  
Eggs turned out to be Clu’s greatest adversary in the culinary pursuits; a single egg managed to stall his baking efforts for twenty minutes while he fished shells out of a mixture of flour and oil that was supposed to turn into a cake with enough time and proper handling. Eventually he gave up and dumped the whole thing into the trash—or he would have, if half of it hadn’t wound up on the floor.  
  
By late afternoon, most of the recipes scribbled on his carefully organized list had been crossed off, and Clu had given up for the day. He needed more supplies, anyway. After washing his hands until all the clumps of flour disappeared from under his fingernails, and wiping the floor with what seemed to be every available paper towel in the house, he retreated to the living room, and the comforting simplicity of the television. Alan didn’t have adult channels, but he did have about six hundred others. Clu nestled into a bed of pillows and cushions, and set his head down on the arm of the couch while he flipped from channel to channel in search of something that wasn’t insipid or enraging.  
  
Users seemed to have everything backwards. Alan had proposed the theory that Clu’s understanding of the “correct” way to go about existence might be skewed based on his coding, and Flynn’s own beliefs, but Clu couldn’t make sense of that. What he knew _was_ right. It just seemed too obvious; it made too much sense, and every time he turned his head, users were flying in the face of reason—of their own rules. They did stupid, illogical things, and then complained when nothing went the way they had intended. Of _course_ they didn’t. Order demanded sacrifice, and users seemed totally unwilling to forfeit any of their own pleasure for necessity. Although he felt a bit hypocritical accusing them of putting pleasure before purpose, given the situation in which he currently found himself. He had abandoned several of his own ideals the moment Alan Bradley touched him, hinting that he might want Clu to stay. The heady rush of excitement still tickled its way down Clu’s spine when he remembered it; someone _wanting_ him. He’d been desired by other programs—he was pretty sure sirens actually lacked subtlety subroutines after the first few incidents—but it wasn’t like whatever had sparked between them in that upstairs bedroom. It wasn’t even like Sam, acting on base urges similar to the ones those adult channels seemed to feed. Alan enjoyed Clu’s presence, and Clu enjoyed his. They connected, and then they _connected_ , and something about it was irresistibly fulfilling. The strangest part was, Clu knew he should feel suspicious of Alan’s eagerness, or at least ashamed of how easily he gave himself over to a user’s whims after the neglect and hobbling he had suffered at the hands of Flynn. But he didn’t. He didn’t feel like he had done anything wrong at all.  
  
Maybe he would have been better off if he’d been written by Alan, instead of Flynn. But then, Clu supposed, he wouldn’t be Clu. He’d be Tron.  
  
Which begged the question: Why had he never considered interfacing with Tron?  
  
He had never really interfaced with anyone, actually. Running the Grid took too much of his time and energy. Even when he spared himself a few micros to enjoy the games, watching rogue programs stumble around trying to delay the inevitable in their last fleeting moments of usefulness, he was always watching, always monitoring the feeds and streams, making sure things remained orderly. He missed the never-ending sense of purpose. It still felt wrong being completely disconnected from his entire reason for being. He had started out frightened by the oppressive silence, and completely unable to communicate that in any way that would make sense to either Sam or the Iso. He was humiliated by the loss of what felt like everything inside that made him whole. Instead he was filled with squishy, needy organs that made noises every time he tried to focus on his own thoughts. He didn’t care about having the wrong body—it wasn’t like he had picked his to begin with—but he cared that it didn’t _feel_ like his own. Not the shape, but the weight of it, the energy, and the way he moved. He felt like he had downloaded himself into someone else.  
  
Alan had questioned whether or not Clu might want to stay, and up until that moment, the answer would have been a very clear and final _no_. He still couldn’t imagine why he would want to give up the Grid for the user world, but the idea kept hanging around, floating in the disorganized clutter of data that was his mind for the time being. If he stayed, would he remain with Alan? Did he _want to?_ Logically, there was nothing about Alan Bradley alone that warranted giving up dominion over the Grid, perfection, and a purpose that shaped an entire world. But Clu’s memory answered that with flashes of a weight on top of his body, moving over him, and warm skin against his own. And it wasn’t just sexual desire mingled with that rush of recollection; Alan intrigued him, challenged him, and Clu genuinely… liked him.  
  
The realization made him simultaneously nauseous and excited. Until he realized he was actually just hungry.  
  
  
_____________  
  
  
  
Tailing someone turned out to be much simpler when they had no reason to believe they might be followed. Ed shifted into park and watched patiently as Bradley parked his own rental in the driveway, turning it off and then pulling his body out what seemed like one long limb at a time. He set his briefcase on top of the car—Ed would have liked a chance to peek inside that dark leather case, but he had a feeling it would never be left vulnerable if there was anything of significance inside. Bradley’s quick glance at the front of the house told Ed someone else was inside, and what little he knew of the man suggested very few candidates. Then the car door was shut, the locks and alarm were set, and Bradley was striding up the walk toward the front door, moving like a man who had planned every step of his evening down to the last detail. When the front door opened it washed the steps in amber-gold light, and in the brief instant before Bradley was inside and the door shut again, Ed was almost certain he saw a woman. It could have been anyone, but Ed already had a feeling he knew who it was; Clu had been suspiciously absent from Bradley’s office that day when Ed stopped by to look for her. He almost wanted it to be Sam Flynn’s strange little friend inside the house. It would make things so much easier if Ed knew exactly where she was.  
  
  
_____________  
  
  
  
Alan barely made it through the door before Clu was on him, sinking to her knees and tugging at his belt in a way that seemed almost resentful of its existence. She had his pants undone and her hand in his briefs before he could think to make sure the door had shut all the way. If he hadn’t already been semi-hard by that point, realizing she was wearing heels, an apron, and _nothing else_ got him there in the time it took to give her a once-over.  
  
“I’m a bad cook, but I’m not stupid,” she said in reply to his unspoken question. She stroked him slowly and smiled. “I’d be interested in knowing just what you find so fascinating about all of this.”  
  
Alan closed his eyes and let his head fall back against the door as a hot, wet tongue swept up the length of his cock, flicking up and off at the tip before returning a second later to torment him more. “Pinup calendars my father kept in the garage,” he said in one long exhalation as Clu swallowed him down. He dropped his briefcase and threaded his fingers into her hair, grasping gently just above the nape of her neck and holding on as she moved; slowly at first, then faster with each bob of her head. He had taught her that the first night, and she took to it like a prodigy. “I used to—I’d steal them at the end of the year, when he threw them out.” The tail end of the last word dissolved into a low groan as Clu hollowed her cheeks and sucked hard, rolling her tongue over the head of his cock until his breath caught and he couldn’t still the tremor in his legs.  
  
She leaned back and let his hot flesh rest against the tip of her tongue and lower lip. “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” she said with a slight shake of her head.  
  
“Doesn’t matter. Keep going.”  
  
Clu obliged, and Alan bit back a groan. He moved both hands to the back of her head, holding her and guiding her all at once. She let him move her mouth down over him, and he thrust his hips to meet her halfway, oblivious to anything but sensation by the time his orgasm started building toward its peak. When he looked down again she had one hand beneath the apron, fingers working at her own breast, and the other down between her legs. That was enough. Alan came hard, startling Clu, who clearly hadn’t expected it to be over so soon. She sat back on her heels and coughed, and Alan gave her an apologetic frown. “Sorry,” he muttered, wiping his thumb across the corner of her mouth as she glared up at him.  
  
“You’ll make it up to me,” Clu replied smugly, flashing him a look that seemed far more dangerous than disgruntled. She waited on her knees with her arms crossed, apparently expecting him to come down to join her on the floor.  
  
Alan had other ideas about how he could make amends and repay her for the warm welcome home. He looked over at the doorway and smirked. “Let’s move to the kitchen.”  
  
  
_____________  
  
  
  
“I wonder what they’re doing right now,” Sam mused aloud. He was stretched out on the couch, half-watching a rerun of Jeopardy while Quorra sat in the armchair calling out answers. She was pretty good. “It’s gotta be boring.”  
  
“Who is Joe Namath.”  
  
Sam tilted his head back and looked at her. “How do you even know who that is?”  
  
“Wikipedia,” she said, shrugging. “Who are you talking about?”  
  
“Dad and Tron.” Sam steadfastly believed that his father had rescued Tron already, if it was possible to do so. Some small shred of childhood hero worship still remained, after all, and Rinzler’s sacrifice over the Sea of Simulation had only helped to repair the damage done when the enforcer’s true identity was revealed. As he recalled the tense moment in the hangar, watching Rinzler beat the hell out of Quorra, Sam realized the program must have looked like Alan under the glassy black helmet. He suppressed a shiver and slumped back down on the armrest. “Sequoia,” he muttered to the TV.  
  
Quorra made a frustrated sound. “It doesn’t count unless your answer is in the form of a question.”  
  
“I’m not really playing, I don’t think it matters.”  
  
“It matters. It’s in the rules.”  
  
“Okay _Clu_.” Man, she had a competitive streak he hadn’t seen coming. It was worse without Clu around to temper her. For some reason when she had to act as a buffer between the other program and Sam, it eased her own compulsive need to excel at whatever they were doing. Video games turned out to be a disaster. She read every book, cover to cover, including the copyright page and the reviews on the back. Any task or hobby she undertook was learned, practiced, and perfected within a day or two. It was like having a sweet-tempered Terminator living in his guest room. Unless he answered a Jeopardy question before she could, then the sweet-tempered part went right out the window. “ _What is_ Yellowstone,” he said, making it a point to turn and look at Quorra. “What are you so upset about? I answered in the form of a question.”  
  
He sat up when the show went to commercial, swinging his feet down to the floor and letting the room right itself around him before he pushed off from the couch. “I’m gonna make a snack, want anything?”  
  
“Thank you for asking, but I’m not hungry.” She had apparently moved on from their tiff over the Jeopardy rules already. Sam wondered if his father had ever noticed how fixated Quorra could get, and whether he might have some pointers for dealing with it when she really got going. He saw a lot of long debates in their future.  
  
“You know this is just College Jeopardy, right?” he asked. “The questions are a lot easier.”  
  
“I thought it seemed odd that you were able to answer so many.”  
  
Sam stopped halfway between the living room and the kitchen. He was honestly shocked into silence, and he could hear Quorra snickering to herself behind him. “Users communicate a great deal through sarcasm and good-natured teasing,” she explained. “I thought I should practice.” When he turned around she was smiling like a house cat. “How did I do?”  
  
“You’re gonna fit in just fine, Q.” He shouldn’t have felt so proud of her, but he _did_ , for some reason.  
  
“As for your father and Tron, I’m not sure,” she continued, skipping over Sam’s praise. “There were many factions vying for control of the city, or specific sectors, and a few pushing for outright rebellion against Clu’s regime. Some of them were obviously eliminated during your time in the system. But Flynn is a user, and that may mean more to some programs than they feel the city is worth. The factions that would have seen Clu overthrown will support him, I’m almost certain. I doubt most programs would harm your father either way; none of the other programs on the Grid are like Clu. Like he was,” she added quickly.  
  
Sam ducked his head into the fridge and pulled out a beer, a block of cheddar cheese, and a bottle of mustard. He had a feeling Quorra wouldn’t want what he was making, even she had been hungry. “You’re still sticking to the ‘he’s changed’ thing?” he asked.  
  
“I am.”  
  
“Yeah, me too,” Sam muttered to himself. He wondered how his father would take to the changes, if he recognized them at all. Clu was still an arrogant pain in the ass, which could easily be enough to cover up the subtle differences between Grid Clu and Real World Clu—like his significantly lessened impulse to destroy everything that didn’t conform to his idea of efficiency. “Not sure what dad’s gonna think of it, though,” he added loud enough for Quorra to hear. He still remembered seeing his father fall as Clu kicked him down the length of the bridge, and the hesitation as the man’s own creation considered whether or not to kill him. It could have gone either way. Sam felt his skin flush with heat and anger when he remembered how helpless he felt in that moment, and how much he wanted to _kill_ Clu.  
  
“Your father is very wise, and he is forgiving,” came Quorra’s clearly well-considered reply. “I think he’ll be pleased to see the progress his own creation has made in such a short time.”  
  
The unintentional echo to Sam’s own thoughts didn’t help settle his painful memory of that night, but he did his best to pretend, for Quorra’s sake. “I guess you’re right,” he said as casually as he could. “We’ll see in a few days, either way.”  
  
“Thursday, right?”  
  
“That’s right.” Sam looked over at the clock; it was after midnight already. He had all of Tuesday and Wednesday to get everything right, fix his many mistakes, and then make the switch. He had broken his word a bit, but Clu hadn’t said anything about dropping the deal they made in the basement. Sam was going to keep up his own end as much as circumstances would allow, and hope against every single ounce of common sense in his being that Clu did the same. All he had to do was get his dad back out of the system. After that… If the Grid couldn’t be left as it was, that was really out of his hands. He just had to keep telling himself that, and ignoring the guilt gnawing at the dead center of his chest.  
  
  
_____________  
  
  
  
Clu swept an arm up over her head, knocking the salt and pepper shakers on their sides, where they rolled off the table and onto the kitchen floor. No one noticed. Certainly not Alan, who had his face buried between her legs, tongue trailing languidly over every sensitive inch of soft skin. Clu writhed on the tabletop, hands clawing at the curved wooden edges as she gasped and keened, occasionally sighing Alan’s name when he made her whole body twitch with a shock of pleasure. In that moment it was hard to imagine she had ever been anything but the woman draped across his kitchen table. Alan’s hand drifted down to alleviate the building ache in his groin, trying to set aside his own needs to keep Clu skirting the edge of orgasm. He stroked himself through his suit, focusing on the sounds of pleasure every swipe of his tongue drew from the program.  
  
“Right—there,” she nearly yelled, and her hand shot down to hold the back of Alan’s head. “There, _yes_ , there.” Alan worked her clit, the tip of his tongue flicking against the slick flesh over and over, while Clu mumbled a litany of praise and what sounded like technical specifications. He pulled her right to the edge and stopped.  
  
“No, you have to keep going!” Clu complained. She propped herself up on one elbow and stared at him in disbelief. “You can’t just _stop!_ ”  
  
Alan put a finger to his lips to shush her—the gesture missing its mark entirely since she didn’t know it—and reached to undo the catch and zipper of his slacks. His belt had remained off after their greeting at the door, and his shirt was already pulled out, with the tails hanging loose around his waist. When he pulled aside his briefs and produced the erection he’d been fighting since his tongue first touched Clu’s skin, she relaxed a little. “You could have said something.”  
  
“Sometimes it’s better to just enjoy the silence.” Alan smiled at the playful glare Clu shot him. He ran his hands along her thighs and grasped her hips, then slid her forward just a bit, just enough to lay his cock against her moist slit. She was leaning on both elbows, watching him, her eyes glassy and dark. For a moment he teased her, coming so close to slipping inside as he rubbed his hard length against her. When he slipped between the outer folds it was only to brush the head of his cock over her entrance, making Clu groan impatiently and spread her legs, inviting him inside. Alan leaned on the table with one hand and angled his cock with the other. When he slipped inside her she was tight and hot, and every inch was bliss. He barely waited to start thrusting, pulling back out and pushing in again with a low groan as he filled her to the hilt. Wisdom told him to start slow, draw the game out until she begged and pleaded for it, sacrificing a quick blaze for a slow burn. Instinct told him to forget that and take her so hard the table hit the other wall. When Clu reached up to grab his tie and wind it around her fist, pulling him down onto her, he threw wisdom out the window and went for it. He gripped the side of the table as he draped his body over hers, driving into her over and over as his other hand slipped down between her legs to finish what he’d already started. Clu threw her head back and bit her lip, fighting to stay in control as Alan worked her. She would lose, because he knew her body about as well as she did, given the circumstances. With a strangled cry, Clu went tight and stiff beneath him, and Alan could feel the flutter of muscle unconsciously squeezing him, pulling him closer to climax as Clu came beneath him. When it was over she went slack, and Alan took the opportunity to sit up; he grasped her hips again and began thrusting to the demands of his own need. Clu watched him, sated, and curiously observant as he pushed himself up to and over the edge.  
  
She hummed a pleased sound as Alan pulled out and let go of her hips. He stepped back to survey the result; she was half off the end of the table, with one heel propped up on a chair, and the other dangling between the table legs. “That was enjoyable,” she observed with a smile. Her assessment of sex was usually very succinct, which Alan found oddly charming.  
  
“I’m glad you liked it.” He tucked himself back into his briefs and reached out to help Clu up off the table. “We should clean up,” he said. “And I could use a shower.”  
  
Clu righted herself and pressed her body against his, wrapping one arm around his waist as she lifted a leg and slid her toes up the length of his calf. Alan watched her for a moment, marveling at how utterly his opinion of this very strange and confusing creature had reversed since the first time he met her. He leaned down just enough to brush his lips against hers, without forcing her into a kiss. Clu met him the rest of the way, and Alan gave up trying to understand. He couldn’t have explained it to anyone if he wanted to. When Clu wrapped both arms around him and let Alan take the lead, he stopped thinking entirely.


	10. Chapter 10

“Do I really need to be here for this?”  
  
“It’s your company, Sam. This is your board, and these are your responsibilities.”  
  
Sam unhooked his ankles and set his feet on the floor, righting his chair and knocking into the long, glass-top table in the process. It didn’t budge, but the quiet hiss Sam drew through his teeth indicated roughly how hard the table had fought back. “I know,” he wheezed. He pressed a hand to the front of his hip and winced melodramatically. “But I think they can handle this sorta stuff without me.”  
  
“They need—Sam,” Alan leaned down to get Sam’s attention when the young executive dropped his forehead to the tabletop. He was stomping his foot on the floor, trying to distract himself from the pain. “Would you sit up? They need your approval for these things.”  
  
“Fine. _Fine_ ,” Sam agreed finally. He sat up and took a deep breath, clearing his throat and squaring his shoulders before looking down the table at the few board members who had bothered to show up to the meeting. Alan felt like telling Sam no, he really _didn’t_ need to be there, but he really wanted to rub it in the faces of the backstabbing bastards who hadn’t bothered. Word would spread through the company that Sam had been there at that ungodly morning hour, ready to get started when half the board was still lying in bed.  
  
Sam halfheartedly flipped through the packet Mackey’s assistant had provided. The copies were freshly printed, still warm from sitting in the collating tray. They must have been drawn up shortly after Alan’s call, barely thirty minutes before Sam arrived in the building. If anyone in Mackey’s office had believed Sam would show, the meeting brief would have been made available in digital copy the night before. It really was a joke how little respect the Flynn name carried, even after the recent changes.  
  
“If everyone’s ready to get started,” someone called to quiet the room.  
  
“Okay, that’s weird,” Sam whispered, leaning in close for privacy. “They want to dedicate a page to my dad on the company site. I didn’t know we did corny shit like that.”  
  
Alan shrugged, but Sam wasn’t done: “Uh, project proposal by _Edward Dillinger Jr.?_ Tell me that’s a joke.”  
  
When Alan turned to the same page he found that Sam wasn’t misreading, nor was it a typo; Dillinger’s name was clearly printed below the proposal. “He’s dicking around with me,” Sam muttered angrily. He looked up and down the table, turning around to check the door. “Where is that little shit, anyway? Shouldn’t he be here?” His tone carried to some of the nearby board members, and a few turned to see what they could glean from the conversation taking place at the far end of the table.  
  
Alan dropped his voice and smiled to throw them off. “Beat him at his own game, Sam,” he muttered. “Approve the project.”  
  
Sam hesitated before nodding, and Alan breathed a small sigh of relief. He could count on one hand the number of times he’d managed to get Sam on board with the right way to handle things, so it was reassuring when he actually paid attention the few times it really mattered. Putting his rival in the hospital wouldn’t help his situation at Encom. It might amuse a few people, but it wasn’t going to win him any favor with the ones who mattered. Not to mention the press, who were already having a blast with the news of another Flynn stepping up to run Encom. No, Sam had to stay under the radar as much as possible, for as long as possible. Alan patted Sam’s arm reassuringly, and received a smile in response.  
  
With the Dillinger issue settled, and the meeting now in full swing, Alan allowed his own thoughts to wander. It was Thursday morning, and the night before Sam had taken Quorra by the arcade to check the progress of the laser. It was just shy of a full recharge, apparently, and would be ready for use any time. With the morning meeting on the books Alan felt they had no choice but to delay the trip back into the system until the afternoon, Possibly even later, depending on how things went. He told himself that his willingness to keep putting it off had nothing to do with Clu. He was just being practical.  
  
 _You’re turning into a fool over a computer program_ , his own thoughts supplied at the first sign of denial. He fought a groan of self-loathing and frowned at himself instead. He really was being silly.  
  
 _Well why the hell not?_ he asked himself. He’d committed _crimes_ in the name of computer programs, after all—and that was before he had any idea that they were living beings. It wasn’t like they’d had permission from the management when they went traipsing about Encom’s old offices back in the day. That was technically breaking and entering, and he was sure Dillinger Sr. would have pressed charges. Sam and Kevin had put their lives on the line to save Quorra, too. So maybe programs weren’t technically human. Given everything he had seen and heard over the past few weeks, Alan was starting to lose sight of the distinction.  
  
Feeling it was wrong to make her hang around the office on her last day in the real world, Alan had left Clu back at the house, where she was no doubt still asleep, arms and legs flung out in every direction on his bed, as usual. He thumbed the corner of his paper packet, staring a thousand miles past the table while he thought about just _why_ he was so hung up on what was, realistically, the least of his concerns. In just a few hours they would make the switch, and Alan would see his best friend, the man he had believed in for twenty years while helping to raise the son he'd left behind. It gutted him that all he could think about was how much he wanted to keep things as they were and yet still get Kevin back somehow. That wasn’t the deal, and he knew Clu wouldn’t stay. So why was it bothering him so much? Was he really that hard up for affection?  
  
“About that,” he said, interrupting whoever had been speaking, and his own maddening thoughts. “I think we need to take another look at the numbers…”  
  
  
_____________  
  
  
  
Clu awoke to the obnoxiously bright sun boring through his eyelids. He made a nonspecific sound and rolled over, flinging all four limbs out in every direction and burying his face between the pillows. After a few minutes the sun started to heat the hair on the back of his head, instead, and sleep was no longer an option. “Fine!” he groused at the window. There were many things he wouldn’t miss when he returned to the Grid, and the sun was at the very top of the long list.  
  
His stomach rumbled as he made his way down the stairs into the kitchen, where the blinds had been thoughtfully drawn shut. Rather than feeling grateful for the consideration, Clu only felt contempt for Alan. He had clearly left them open in the bedroom to force Clu out of bed at a ‘reasonable hour’ as usual.  
  
The clock on the stove read a little after eleven, which was still mostly meaningless to Clu, except that it meant morning instead of night. He could have figured that out by the burning beam of pure energy assaulting him from every crack in the blinds, but apparently he was supposed to do certain things at certain hours. One of those things was eating regular meals, which he didn’t mind anyway. He was starting to really enjoy the process. A pan had been left out for him, as well as a printed sheet with instructions for making himself an omelet. Funny, he felt, that his first and last meals in the user would should be the same.  
  
With the pan heating and all the necessary supplies set out in order of use on the counter, Clu took a moment to inventory himself for the day: he was clean, dressed, and physically prepared for the trip back to his system. The Iso would accompany him, per their agreement. He was less bothered by the prospect than he wanted to be. Together they would locate Flynn, at which point the Iso would take the user to the portal without interference from any of Clu’s forces. They would leave and, with any luck, never return. With Sam outside waiting, there was no way to back out of the arrangement at a convenient time, and truthfully, Clu didn’t much feel like bothering. It gave him a sense of satisfaction and a healthy dose of smug superiority to know that he would keep his word where Sam Flynn couldn’t. Maybe users would return to the system some day. Maybe it would be Kevin Flynn. And when that happened, Clu would deal with it. He had a feeling he would have his hands busy fixing all of the _improvements_ Flynn had made in his absence, and that would keep his mind off the thought of users for some time.  
  
The butter he had placed in the pan started burning, turning brown and bubbling with a strange skin on top. Clu shifted the pan off the burner to let it cool just as the doorbell rang, startling him and drawing his attention before he could turn down the dial on the burner. From the kitchen he could see into the living room, and the front door, but there were curtains over the windows that obscured his view of the outside. He had discovered that there was no way to immediately identify visitors when someone Alan later referred to as _Fedex_ had come by the day before. Fortunately for Clu, Fedex had finally given up and left his parcel on the doorstep.  
  
This time the doorbell kept ringing, forcing Clu to eventually give in and see who it was. He turned the lock and peered through the crack between the first door and the secondary (highly redundant) glass door on the outside. Standing on the front step, looking very out of place, was Ed from Encom. Before Clu could ask why he was there, the user had already reached for the handle on the glass door.  
  
  
_____________  
  
  
  
It was just about lunchtime when they finally closed and moved past the third absurdly long debate on fiscally responsible resource allocation something-bullshit-something that Sam had actually stopped listening to about halfway through. Someone raised a request to break for lunch, and Sam made a mental note to give that forward-thinking individual a raise. He wasn’t actually sure he could dictate the salaries of board members, but it was something he intended to look into. At the very least he should send them a birthday card. That seemed like the sort of thing a secretary would do, though.  
  
“Hey, Alan,” he said as he shrugged on his jacket. “Question. Do I have a secretary?”  
  
“They’re called executive assistants now, and I thought that was what you had Quorra doing?”  
  
“Really? Do you think she’s gonna be happy running copies and making me coffee?” Even worse, he could only imagine what his dad would say when he came back to find his miracle playing office in the typing pool. _That_ would go over well.  
  
Alan seemed to follow his logic. “We’ll get someone for you. Someone with a lot of stamina.”  
  
Sam leaned away from Alan and gave him a wry smile. “ _Really_.”  
  
“Don’t be crude.” The way Alan frowned and turned away, Sam thought for a moment that he might have actually succeeded in embarrassing the man for once—intentionally, anyway. “I meant someone who could keep up with your erratic schedule,” Alan corrected.  
  
“Okay, okay,” Sam chuckled. They stepped into the elevator together, and the conversation fell silent as the car descended to the lobby. Sam continued snickering quietly to himself, which was only made worse by Alan’s obvious discomfort. When he tried he apologize it just came out as more choked laughter. Crossing the lobby, he tried to ask, “You ever have a secretary with a lot of stamina?” before erupting in a fit of laughter that left him coughing into his hand. He doubled over with his hands on his knees, staring at his own feet.  
  
“Are you done?”  
  
“I think so,” Sam wheezed.  
  
  
_____________  
  
  
  
Ed advanced slowly across the room, pushing Clu back a little with each step. She seemed both wary and annoyed, and he found it more than a little amusing that someone so incredibly dull could have so much going on in her head at one time. “Why don’t you tell me what Sam is up to?” he asked, trying to keep his tone friendly, and as casual as the circumstances allowed.  
  
“Sam is at work,” Clu said, dismissing all pretense of hospitality. “What do you _think_ he’s up to?”  
  
“That isn’t the question I asked. He has it somewhere, doesn’t he?” It wouldn’t be in Bradley’s house, and there were any number of dingy little hovels Flynn could have been holed up in for the last decade where he might have foolishly stashed a multimillion dollar piece of hardware. Ed had heard rumors circulating that he was living in a garage at one point. “The laser?”  
  
Clu lifted her chin and stopped just inside the threshold of the kitchen. “Get out.”  
  
“Gladly. As soon as I have what I want. You don’t think I want to spend any longer than I have to in Bradley’s pathetic shrine to failed suburban domesticity?” He flicked a cover off the closest armrest, and it landed in a little floral pile next to the foot of the couch. “This whole place is as dated and pathetic as his ideas about proprietary software.”  
  
He gave her another appraising scan when she crossed her arms in an obvious attempt to intimidate him. She was fit, and it was never more obvious than when she stood straight and tried to stare him down. “Leave, _or I will make you leave_ ,” she said. Ed had no doubt she meant it. Whether or not she could deliver would decide how their unplanned showdown would proceed.  
  
He lifted his hands and clapped at her show of bravado. It was time to put her resolve to the test; he took another step forward and nodded as she stepped back again. So much for intimidation tactics. “Maybe we got off on the wrong foot,” he said, faking a conciliatory tone. “Why don’t we just sit down and talk about this?”  
  
“We’re done talking, user.”  
  
Ed put his arms out and shrugged. “But I’m not done.”  
  
Before he could blink, she lunged, aiming her fist high. Ed ducked low and narrowly avoided a blow that had been meant for his face. It grazed off his ear instead, stinging hotly and making him curse as he barreled forward and pushed her backwards into a countertop island in the center of the kitchen. Something crashed to the floor, and Clu brought her knee up into his chest, just enough off-center to avoid truly knocking the wind out of him. He regained his balance and breath just in time to grab one of her arms and push it high over her head, crowding her against the cabinets as they grappled with each other, each trying for the upper hand. She was stronger, which surprised him, but he had the advantage of better balance and _not_ being pinned against a kitchen counter. She tried to shove him away with her hip, but it only gave him the leverage he needed to turn her and use his own weight to keep her in place. At some point he had grabbed her hair with his other hand, and at that moment it seemed that was the only thing preventing her from smashing her own forehead into his. Her free hand dug into the skin of his hand, trying to free her head to move and possibly dislodge him entirely, but he had her held fast. “This isn’t how I intended to do things,” he grunted when she tried to wrench herself free again. “You know?” Using violence hadn’t even crossed his mind until it was happening, and by then it was too late to turn back. There was no way she would give him anything now, not unless he forced it out of her.  
  
Another jerk of her trapped arm moved both their hands closer to the stovetop, and suddenly Ed could feel the heat wafting off the glass surface. A silver pan sat off to one side, away from the pulsing red element of the nearby burner. “Where’s the laser?” he asked again, hoping she understood what he was willing to do, having already crossed one line.  
  
“I will derezz you, _slowly_ ,” she sneered at him.  
  
Ed did his best to shrug. “Whatever that means,” he said, and thrust her hand down onto the burner. It took what seemed like a long time for the pain to register, but when it did she _really_ screamed—an indignant, animal sound that was so full of shock that Ed caught himself laughing. She jerked her arm enough to loosen his grip and pull her palm from the burner, but the damage had been done. He released her, and she crumpled to the floor on her knees, cradling the injury.  
  
“Are you feeling a little more helpful now?” he asked. He stepped back to catch his breath and give her some room, straightening his glasses and shirt while he waited for a response. He wasn’t a violent man by nature. He didn’t want to have to injure her. But he had plans, and a very limited window of time in which to act on them. When she didn’t answer in what he felt was plenty of time to gather her thoughts and give him a location, he looked up at the pan that was still sitting off to the side of the stovetop.  
  
“Okay,” he said quietly. He reached out and slid the pan back onto the burner. “Let’s just warm that up.”  
  
Understanding turned immediately to fear. “Don’t.”  
  
“The laser,” he demanded.  
  
He could see her struggle with the ultimatum. Whatever she knew, it was enough to give her pause in the face of a very real threat. He could only imagine what sort of secrets she was protecting for Flynn. All he had to do was crack open the vault. “Why don’t I get you some ice while you think about it?”  
  
  
_____________  
  
  
  
“You’re saying—and let me get this straight, because I want to be able to repeat it when I need to tell a funny story—you think one day we can set up some sort of… revolving door in and out of the Grid? You think Clu is gonna let that happen?”  
  
Alan looked around the cafe, half-nodding, half shaking his head. It was a pipe dream, an unrealistic grab at something ridiculous, but he didn’t want to share that with Sam, not now, anyway. “I think it’s something we could consider,” he said. “This experience has been very positive for Clu. If he goes back—”  
  
“When.”  
  
“Let me finish. If he goes back to find that his own feelings about the system and his responsibilities there have changed, maybe we’ll find that he is willing to let your father continue his work from the inside.” There. That sounded like it had been based in something logical. “You have no interest in ever going back there?”  
  
Sam snapped off a piece of cookie and popped it in his mouth. “I think once was enough.”  
  
“That seems a little rash, given the circumstances.”  
  
“Yeah, well, you can go in with Clu and Quorra and ask to see some of the highlights of my trip.”  
  
“I wonder what might have been if things had gone differently in there. If your father had just told someone about his… project. We could have helped him much sooner.” At the very least, Alan could have monitored what was going on from the outside.  
  
“Don’t think I haven’t thought about that a million times since I found him. _Hey dad, did you ever think about leaving yourself a get outta jail free card?_ ” He sighed through his nose and reached for his own drink to take a long, slow sip. “I don’t want to be too hard on him, though,” he added after setting the cup back down on the table. “It’s not like he hasn’t suffered enough.”  
  
That was true. Alan nodded and reached for the discarded half of Sam’s cookie. “I wonder what he’ll do once he’s home.”  
  
“Well, we’ll know tonight.”  
  
  
_____________  
  
  
  
The pain was so much worse than anything Clu had ever imagined experiencing. During his time on the floor, he had contemplated just how incredibly vulnerable his user body actually was; how easily it could be scratched and bruised; all the ways the joints could be damaged; how the integrity of the tissue could be compromised; and all the many ways it might fall victim to forces he couldn’t predict, account for, or defend against. He had burned himself once before already, the first time Alan let him cook. The pain subsided in just a few hours that time, but it left him with a lingering wariness around the stove that bordered on respectful fear. It hadn’t stopped him from trying to cook—nothing would actually stop him from doing whatever he wanted to do. But he was careful now, and weighed each action against the risks and potential for harm that might follow. With his right hand burned as it was currently, the skin cracked and swelling unevenly, he suddenly understood why Alan had been so quick to stop him the first time. If only he’d been on the Grid, he could just repair the damaged code. Of course, if he’d been on the Grid, he wouldn’t have _been_ burned in the first place. He wouldn’t have made a fool of himself with Sam, he wouldn’t have had to deal with the humiliation of struggling to accommodate the needs of a body that wasn’t his, and he wouldn’t be sitting on Alan’s kitchen floor, trying to stop his eyes from producing an excessive amount of liquid against his wishes. That was the worst part.  
  
The cooling effect of the ice subsided after only a short time away from his skin, and the pain of the burn returned. Clu reconsidered his previous assessment; the pain was worse.  
  
Ed shoved his phone back into his pocket and made a flapping gesture with his hand. “Get up.”  
  
“Why?”  
  
“Uh… because,” Ed said, sounding suddenly distracted. He made a backwards circle and scratched the back of his head as he scanned the room for something. “Because we need to go. We’re running out of time.”  
  
“I have no reason to do anything you say.”  
  
After another quick turn around, Ed stopped and looked down at Clu. He paused, obviously thinking, before he reached down and grabbed the towel full of ice. “Now you do. Get up.”  
  
The pain returned again almost immediately, hot and raw all the way down through the tissue. Clu made a strangled sound and gripped his wrist tight in an effort to contain the agony, but it didn’t do anything. He tried waving the hand in the air to cool the burn, but that only made it worse. “ _Where?_ ” he demanded through clenched teeth.  
  
“You tell me. The sooner we get there, the sooner you get this back,” Ed answered. He was losing his temper. Clu had enough experience with his own short patience to know it wouldn’t be long before the user once again took more extreme measures to ensure results. He had made an aggressive move that would obviously have consequences; Clu’s safety now depended on the weight of those consequences, and what Ed felt it was worth to risk success.  
  
For some strange reason, causing himself minor pain elsewhere seemed to help distract from the immediate, grinding pain in his hand. Clu knocked the back of his head into the cabinet and tried to think. He had forgotten what Flynn’s workspace was called. A parallel existed in the Grid, superficially. In his world it was really no more than a small room with a desk and a chair, leading into a larger chamber that opened to the street. He hadn't ever bothered _naming_ it. After all, it was just the place Flynn appeared when he came to the Grid. “Arc—arcade. The arcade,” he said. “It’s in the basement.”  
  
“Good girl. Now, get up.” Ed tossed the bag of ice back into Clu’s lap. “I assume you will behave in the car.”  
  
Going with the user seemed like a very bad idea, and Sam’s earlier warnings, which had seemed pointless and condescending at the time, came back to Clu as he watched Ed’s patience begin to wane again. The user was already on edge, and clearly unstable. Clu couldn’t begin to guess why the was so fixated on the laser, but it obviously meant a lot to him—or rather, locating it did. He had calmed down when Clu finally provided him with the location, if he went along, and Ed saw that he was telling the truth, it might diffuse his anger entirely. Then again, if Ed’s plan included _destroying_ the laser, there would be no trip back to the Grid, no trade for Flynn. They would both be trapped where they were, each in a world that didn’t belong to them. He had already risked enough exposing the location of the device in his moment of panic. Leading the user down into the basement and handing him the Grid would be an unforgivable breech of his directive.  
  
“I’ll go,” Clu said, doing his best to sound like the administrator he was coded to be. “But you will tell me what you’re planning, first.”  
  
Ed narrowed his eyes, clearly considering the arrangement. “No, I don’t think so,” he said after a short pause. “The less you know, the less likely you are to interfere.”  
  
“From my own experience, that is not always the case.”  
  
“Enough, get up.” Ed finally gave up trying to make Clu stand on his own, and instead reached down to haul him to his feet. It took some time, and Clu did nothing to make the process easier on the user. Once he was upright they were moving fast, with Ed holding Clu’s arm just below the shoulder, tight against his side, marching out of the kitchen toward the front door. Clu allowed himself to be walked outside to the little black car waiting in the driveway. It was already running, as though Ed had assumed he would be in and out. With an invisible clock looming over them, Clu began considering all the ways he could use time to his advantage.  
  
  
_____________  
  
  
  
Sam looked at this phone again. There was no way the meeting could last all damn day. A few hours, sure. But who had all day board meetings? He felt like some of them were going out of their way to prolong each bullet point as long as possible. It was all ridiculous bullshit, too; sponsoring a local Brownie troop? Even Alan seemed to be losing his patience. Sam might have kept his mouth shut if it hadn’t been for the impatient pencil tapping and permanent scowl he caught every time he glanced to his left.  
  
“I have a question,” he said, raising his hand in the air. He took it back down when Alan shook his head and frowned. “Why are we spending the whole day arguing about…” he flipped back a page. “ _Promotional signage for out-of-state career fairs?_ Are you guys serious?”  
  
Someone—Sam had no idea who he was, and he really didn’t care—leaned forward to look down the length of the glass table at him. “Is there a problem, Mr. Flynn?”  
  
“Yeah, we’ve been here since like six, and I don’t know much about accounting, but I’m pretty sure everyone here is getting paid for this. Right?” He watched several of them nod and look around at their fellow board members. “Okay. So this is a huge waste of money _and_ time. And since most of the _bitching_ —sorry—the objections seem to deal with the bottom line, I’m thinking the first thing we can do to fix that is cut out crap like this. Can I dismiss this meeting?”  
  
The room was silent, and it was a moment or two before someone actually answered. “Y—yes?”  
  
“Good. Great job everyone, see you in the morning.” He pushed his chair back and stormed out of the room. Alan’s many lectures about decorum and dignity went right out the window as he shoved the glass door out of the way.  
  
“Sam,” Alan followed him out of the room, hot on his heels. “Sam, wait.”  
  
“Alan, I tried. But I’m not gonna let them sit there and waste my time. Not like this. I gave them—” he paused and counted up the hours. “Holy shit, do you know how long we’ve been here?”  
  
Alan kept trying to interrupt, but he was blocked by muttered curses and observations that it was probably best no one else could hear. Sam eventually relented, gesturing for Alan to speak. He wasn’t going to apologize, and he definitely wasn’t about to go back in there. His day had been completely shot. Probably the most important day of his life, and he had spent the first two-thirds of it numbing his ass in a chair while days—weeks passed on the Grid, and his father waited. He had secured control of Encom, the board could wait for him to get the other half of his life back before he wasted any more of his time on their petty crap.  
  
The end of his tantrum earned him a tired look from Alan, and a gesture to lead the way out of the hall and into the elevator. “This will have consequences,” Alan informed him. “I can’t shield you from—”  
  
“You don’t have to _shield me_ from anything, Alan.” Sam stepped into the elevator and pressed the button for the first parking level. He appreciated Alan’s concern, but he was almost thirty. It was time to take control of his own life. Wasn’t that what all those unannounced visits had been about since the day he turned eighteen? “I’ll handle this—later. Go home. Get Clu. I’ll meet you at the arcade in two hours.” He exited to the garage with a backwards wave over his shoulder, and didn’t look back until he was in the car. The last thing he could handle was Alan’s disappointment.  
  
  
  
_____________  
  
  
  
Alan watched Sam saunter off the elevator with all the confidence he rightfully should have had from the start. The board had played games with him, and just as he should have, Sam shut it down—albeit a little later than he probably should have. Alan wanted to grab him by the shoulders and tell him how proud he was, but that wasn’t what Sam needed at the moment. He needed to stand on his own two feet and take control of the situation, without someone holding him up from behind. Alan would take a backseat and let Sam lead the way. Encom was his now, after all.  
  
Alan still had his copy of the meeting agenda in his hand as he settled into the driver’s seat, the various pages wrinkled and bent at the top corners from where he had flipped through them over and over. He lifted it and scanned for the proposal Edward Dillinger had submitted. That should have been their first indication that something was up. Alan had assumed that they’d been so fixated on petty issues for the first half of the meeting because they wanted to spend the rest discussing more important matters, and that some of the board members had been more belligerent than usual in objecting or defending proposals because of Sam’s presence. It turned out the whole thing was a game, set up to make both Sam and Alan look like fools. He should have seen it sooner, but his thoughts had been elsewhere for most of the morning. His mistake had cost them a lot of time.  
  
Yet another ridiculous suggestion on the page caught his eye; a proposal to take a second look at the digitizing laser, and investigate its applications in current data conversion technology. He had trouble believing anyone still working for the company—besides himself and maybe Roy Kleinberg—even remembered that the laser had ever existed, let alone what it was supposed to have done. Flynn had apparently made sure to erase nearly all traces of it when he moved it to his private lab. Alan skipped to the end of the write-up, to the author’s name: _Edward Dillinger Junior, senior software engineer and Encom OS 12 project lead_. Alan looked up and scanned the garage for Sam before turning back to the packet. On the next page, the proposal to sponsor a local Brownie troop had also been authored by Dillinger. The same was true of the career fair budget write-up, another proposal to install a gray water system in the bathrooms, and every other line item on the agenda.  
  
“ _What the hell?_ ”


	11. Chapter 11

“I wouldn’t have pegged Kevin Flynn for the paranoid type. He always seemed like such a trusting idiot. I have to admit, this level of forethought and security is mildly impressive.”  
  
Clu snapped her head to the side and glared at the user. “Shut up.”  
  
Ed smiled and pushed Clu through the small doorway behind the video game cabinet. He could smell the stale air and thick dust wafting up from the basement passage. At the bottom a hint of light from the street illuminated the small workspace, revealing a wide, desk-sized computer console with two identical towers attached to either side of an abnormally large screen. An obvious throwback to the era of Flynn’s relevance; Ed recalled seeing something similar in a picture of his father taken during his time at Encom. On the opposite wall from the console, next to the door, sat the laser. Ed tried to suppress the chill that rattled through him at the unmistakable line of sight from the barrel of the laser to where the computer chair would have been, if someone hadn’t pushed it to the other side of the room. A few shreds of his own common sense clung to the hope that his wild theory about Flynn’s reason for taking the laser, his sudden disappearance twenty years ago, and his current whereabouts had all been a result of stress and the earnest if misguided desire to find the quickest end to the Flynn legacy once and for all.  
  
“Tell me about this,” he demanded quietly. Clu stood between Ed and the desk, taking a curiously defensive stance, as though she could stop him from accessing the console. She might put up a good fight, but at the moment he had the upper hand. Or at least the hand that wasn’t burned and blistered. “Go sit on the couch,” he directed when she refused to answer. Disturbances in the thick layer of dust that coated literally everything in the room suggested that someone else had been there recently. He briefly scanned the rest of the basement as Clu shuffled closer to where he had pointed. She didn’t sit down, but she had given up her post in front of the console, at least.  
  
“Why would you want to know where it was, if you don’t know what it does?” Clu asked. Still trying to prove that he wasn’t as violent as his previous actions would suggest, Ed reined in his urge to backhand her. She had been vitriolic the entire drive to the arcade, and continued making nasty little observations and sarcastic offhand remarks while Ed painstakingly picked the lock on the front door. She had then become especially difficult after refusing to show him how he could access the hidden basement passage. The fact that he hadn’t _thrown_ her down the stairs ahead of him was a testament to the strength of his will.  
  
He set a hand on her shoulder and pushed her down onto the couch when she refused to sit. “I know what it does. I want to hear _you_ say it,” he said.  
  
Clu narrowed her eyes, and Ed could see in the determined set of her jaw that she had drawn a line in the sand. Or she was stalling. “Alright,” he sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose below his glasses. “Then I’ll start pressing keys and pulling plugs, and we’ll see if that jogs your memory.”  
  
“No!” Clu shouted. She lunged forward with both hands outstretched, trying to regain the ground between Ed and the console, but her haste sent the wet rag that had been half-wrapped around her injured hand flying off to the side, where it landed atop a dusty box of cassette tapes. Clu faltered and came to a stop, holding her hand in a pained claw against her chest as she hissed a sharp gasp through her teeth. “Don’t,” she demanded piteously, lurching forward a few more steps to put herself between Ed and the computer. He hadn’t bothered moving. She wasn’t nearly the same threat he had faced in Bradley’s kitchen, and all he had to do was grab her hand to forestall any sincere attempts at stopping him. Despite being an unintended and rather barbaric act, putting her hand down on the stove seemed to be paying off in spades.  
  
“Why?” he asked. “Is there something important on this glorified rock? It’s hard to believe a piece of junk like this once passed for cutting edge.” He unfolded his arms and rapped the back of his knuckles on the top of the console, making Clu flinch and glare as though her anger alone could make him rethink his threat. “Does that bother you?”  
  
“Stop asking pointless questions.”  
  
“I’ll take that as a yes.” Ed let her have a moment to relax, and then he turned and gave the side of the console a swift kick with the heel of his shoe. Clu instantly exploded, shouting a string of obscenities that made Ed recoil as though she’d thrown a bucket of filth in his face. “My, such ladylike composure,” he muttered to himself when she was finished. Rather, he had assumed she was finished. He was wrong.  
  
  
_____________  
  
  
  
“Are you done?” Ed asked after the second round of fury Clu unleashed on him in response to his needless attack on the computer. It may have been a “glorified rock” to the user, but it contained the Grid, and everything that gave Clu’s existence purpose and meaning. Before his journey to the user world with Sam and the Iso, he never would have imagined a user could be so needlessly destructive, though he’d known all too well that Flynn had wrought plenty of accidental chaos with his carelessness. Still, he had never directly threatened the Grid as a means of controlling or punishing Clu, even during the coup that cut him off from his own world. Clu couldn’t say he would have been so restrained if their roles had been reversed, and the sudden realization that he would have done something just as vicious without giving it a second thought was jarring, even in the face of the very real threat Ed posed at that moment.  
  
“What do you _want_ ,” Clu demanded. He set aside the disconcerting thoughts of Flynn to be analyzed when everything that mattered most to him wasn’t being threatened. “I led you to the laser. I’ve had enough of these games.”  
  
“I want to know who you are, or what you are.”  
  
“Wh—” Clu looked at Ed as though he had just asked him how to sit on a light cycle. “You could have asked that without all the unnecessary theatrics.” He raised his injured hand and waved it gently.  
  
“Well,” Ed shrugged. “I had a few more questions. But let’s start with your real name, if you have one.”  
  
Clu hesitated, and in that brief pause Ed made his way around the side of the console and opened a panel that contained vital components that it was obvious should not, under any circumstances, be tampered with. He didn’t know why, and he couldn’t begin to guess what had prompted it, but he felt an instant surge of panic as Ed reached down and started gathering wires in his hand. He would destroy the Grid and think nothing of it. All at once it was clear that had been his plan from the start, whether or not Clu answered him. The rest was just a game; satisfying the user’s curiosity before he pulled the plug. It obviously had something to do with Sam, but Clu didn’t have time to ponder Ed’s motivations or assign the proper amount of blame to Kevin Flynn’s hapless progeny; he had to act.  
  
Just as Ed turned to see if his threat had been received, Clu struck; his closed fist connected with the side of the user’s face, sending him down to the floor in a heap. The pain of closing his injured hand galvanized Clu, and he pulled his arm back for another blow. Ed’s good eye widened in alarm at the oncoming fist, and at the last second he jerked his head back, simultaneously deflecting most of the attack and slamming the back of his head into the brick wall beside the computer. The punch grazed his cheek and nose, and Clu’s fist hit the basement floor with a sickening crunch as a standing lamp fell with a clatter to the ground beside them. Blood smears painted the side of the console and the floor, but whether from Clu’s hand or Ed’s nose, it was impossible to tell anymore. They both reeled from their own self-inflicted injuries, but Ed recovered first; he swung his free arm wildly, eventually connecting the side of his hand with Clu’s throat. For the second time that day Clu was forced to back off from a fight he had started, but Ed wasn’t faring much better. He rolled onto his back, one hand over his nose, the other behind his head as he groaned in pain. If he hadn’t been so incapacitated, Clu might have taken a moment to laugh at the ridiculous spectacle. While Ed moaned and gurgled like an idiot on the floor, Clu recovered and pushed himself to his feet. He grabbed one of Ed’s ankles and hauled him across the grating and away from the console. Ed reacted by kicking blindly, but he failed to connect, and Clu returned his efforts with a kick of his own that caught Ed in the back of the knee. The resulting screech of pain was much more satisfying than he imagined it would be.  
  
“My name,” Clu rasped, “is _still_ Clu.” He paused to catch his breath. “But you already knew that.” He made his way over to a box that had been left in the corner. Flynn had left a long cable wound in a loop at the very top, and luckily Clu had noticed it the last time he accompanied Sam to the arcade. It was flexible enough to be wrapped around the user’s wrists and tied. Clu assumed that would be enough to keep him from causing any irreversible damage until Alan or Sam thought to come looking for them. He had no way of contacting them on his own, and he certainly wasn’t leaving Ed alone with the Grid.  
  
“Just tell me if he’s there,” Ed demanded. He spit a generous amount of blood onto the floor and sniffled as he wiped his sleeve across his still-bleeding nose. “Is it true?” He sounded borderline hysterical, but it stirred no pity in Clu. “Answer me!” Ed shrieked. He tried to sit up, but his eyes rolled back and he slumped backwards again. “Tell me Kevin Flynn is in there,” he pleaded. “Just tell me that much, and I promise I’ll leave. I’ll leave you alone.”  
  
Clu stood over him with the cable in his good hand. Sam had ordered him to keep quiet about the Grid, but it seemed they were well past that point. He wondered if it would be in his best interests—and the best interests of the Grid—to answer Ed honestly. If he knew Flynn was alive inside the system, would that change his intentions toward the Grid? Or was Flynn’s existence itself the focus of his rage? Ed seemed desperate to find confirmation, and after a moment to consider the consequences, Clu decided to answer him. There was little he would be able to do once he was tied up, either way. “He’s in there,” he said. “But not for much longer.” He then turned to check the screen, and the progress bar that would indicate how much longer they had to wait before the laser could be used again. To his surprise it was showing 100% completion. For a few seconds Clu forgot that he had left his enemy on the ground, and he leaned down over the screen to consider his options. He could enter the Grid before Sam arrived and insisted on sending the Iso instead. Even if they were already on their way to the arcade, Clu would have plenty of time.  
  
He frowned at himself. Plenty of time to do what?  
  
Unfortunately for Clu, his pause had given Ed the opportunity he needed to regain control of both his faculties and the situation; he came from behind, wrapping Clu with both arms and forcing him down against the front of the console head first. Clu twisted in his grip, but for all his efforts he only managed to free his good hand. Ed retained control of the other, a fact he exploited to cause Clu considerable pain by squeezing his fingers together. With his face pressed to the glass, Clu stared at the blinking prompt hidden below the progress indicator.  
  
“Very considerate of you to give me something I could use to tie you up,” Ed sneered. He wrenched Clu’s arm behind his back and started to wrap his wrist with one end of the cable. “Once I have you out of the way, I’ll take care of Flynn, and then we can all,” he paused to tighten the knot on the cable, “go home. Well, most of us.”  
  
“You said if I told you—”  
  
Ed jumped in before Clu could finish. “Yeah, I lied.”  
  
The prompt was still blinking from the other side of the glass, taunting Clu with each flash. `Yes`, it asked, or `No`.  
  
Before Ed’s hand could close around his other wrist, Clu slammed his fingers down on `Yes`.  
  
  
The first thing that registered as more than stray thought and blurred sensation was the feeling of being hit by a wall of data so powerful that it knocked Clu to his feet. He rolled onto his knees and cupped his hands to his ears, curling inward in a desperate bid to escape the roar of noiseless sound. Distantly he thought he could hear himself screaming, but whatever came out of him was nothing compared to the torrent of information pouring through every channel and feed, filling his mind until he thought he might just explode like fireworks above the arena. It overloaded his system until his other senses shut down to process the burden, and he was left blind to everything but the uncontrollable wave crashing over him.  
  
Something struck him, and in the chaos and confusion Clu couldn’t tell if it was real or part of the relentless assault. He had no alarms to tell him that he was injured, but his hand instinctively went to his side, and he felt the growing throb of pain that indicated he’d been hit. Then he remembered; Ed had been standing with him when he activated the laser. The user was still there, and he had the advantage of being removed from the infinite streams of data that coursed through the Grid a million times every nano. When Clu had managed to order his functions enough to regain his sight, he saw the retreating figure of the user dashing up out of the replica of Flynn’s office, presumably out into the streets of the Grid. Clu didn’t know what damage Ed could do from within the system, but he couldn’t allow for the time to find out. He had to get up. Just as he had forced himself to fight through the pain, he had to regain control of himself now.  
  
It was so much harder to wrestle the data feeds, and though Clu had no idea how long it actually took, in his mind he thought an infinity had passed before he managed to close himself off enough to manage standing. For three weeks he had thought wistfully of the Grid, and his innate connection that made him a native part of the system unlike any other program. He tried to remember the sensation, and when that failed, he tried to pretend. His primitive user imagination had produced nothing so wild and massive as the reality. Once he was sturdy on his feet, the next step was motion. It took some time, but eventually he was able to move, and with each step he began to feel more like himself. He used his hands to take a quick inventory of his shape, noting that he was still rendered more like the Iso than himself. A moment of disappointment was all he would allow, though; there was a dangerous user loose on the Grid, _his_ Grid, and whoever had taken over in the vacuum his absence undoubtedly left would soon know both Ed and Clu were there, if they didn’t already.  
  
  
_____________  
  
  
  
Clu wandered the streets for a while, careful to duck into alcoves or hide himself in alleys when other programs wandered past. They wouldn’t know him from a visual register, but a nano spent scanning his processes would reveal him to every program in the sector. The lack of recognizers in the sky gave him a little hope that he wasn’t flagging unfriendly, but he didn’t want to risk stumbling across hostile programs who had bone to pick with the recently returned administrator. He never had been able to fully liberate the Grid from its diseased fragments, and resistance cells popped up among the programs as quickly as he could send the blackguard to snuff them out. Now _he_ was the rogue element, and if the wrong program registered his presence, he might find himself thrown into a cell for the next round of the games. If not derezzed outright.  
  
As he dodged across an all-too familiar intersection, Clu realized that the burn on his hand was gone, as were the injuries he had obtained during his second confrontation with Ed. Clearly part of him had synched with the system, or he wouldn’t have been waylaid by the tidal wave of data that prevented him from overtaking Ed as soon as they arrived, but his rectified injuries confirmed that he was still the recognized as the system administrator. Flynn hadn’t changed that, at least.  
  
Most of what he encountered during his journey seemed exactly the same, and Clu was briefly relieved by the comforting familiarity—until he spied his first sentry. The program was standing on a corner, watching a group as they passed on their way into a lounge. The programs in the group were all different shades of the same reds and oranges found on so many programs in the cycles after Clu took control of the Grid, but the sentry was circuited in the same blue Tron wore in his days as the lead system monitor. He had no helmet, and as the last of the group passed, _he nodded and smiled at them_. Clearly much had changed. Clu ducked back into the shadow of a nearby tower and watched for a moment longer before making his way as far from the re-rectified sentry as his planned route would take him. It was some time before he was able to shake the shock of what he had seen. There was only one reason his sentries would change their circuits: Flynn was in control of the Grid, and he had taken the ample time provided by Clu’s accidental exile to build himself an army from what was left behind on the Rectifier. The very idea should have burned his circuits with rage, but instead Clu just felt tired. He almost wished Flynn would find him, though he had no illusions that would end favorably for him. He wondered if his user would believe that Ed had intended to destroy the Grid, and that it had been Clu who stopped him, or if he would have his disc locked and—Clu reached back to feel for his disc, but his hand only touched the empty space between his shoulders. What that meant, he couldn’t tell, but it didn’t seem like it could be good.  
  
Just as he passed the ruin of what had once been the End of Line, a voice rattled out of the darkness beside him, freezing Clu with a fear so primal he almost believed he still had blood in his body to turn cold.  
  
“ _Welcome back_ ,” came the sinister greeting from Tron.  
  
  
_____________  
  
  
  
“So they were working together,” Sam sneered. He tossed the packet of papers into the trash can next to Alan’s desk. “Any idea where Dillinger is now?”  
  
“No one I’ve spoken to has seen him today. I can’t even pin someone from the board down to find out why no one else noticed that Dillinger was behind this farce. Which means the others were probably involved, or told to keep their mouths shut.”  
  
Sam sighed and scrubbed the back of his head with both hands. He looked tired. Alan couldn’t say he felt much better. “And you’re sure Clu isn’t back at your place?” Sam asked.  
  
“I called her three times, and then I called the house next door.”  
  
“How’d that go?”  
  
Alan shrugged. “The nanny answered.” He didn’t want to repeat the next part; Sam couldn’t know what Clu’s betrayal meant, but Alan knew, and that was bad enough by itself.  
  
“And?”  
  
“She said she saw a man and a woman get into a car and leave. The man was driving a black Audi with, quote, _a one-eyed Pringles guy sticker on the back window_.”  
  
Sam’s shoulders slumped in defeat and he nodded slowly. “Yeah, that’s gotta be Dillinger.”  
  
Alan felt like Clu had somehow managed to reach into his chest from wherever she and Dillinger had disappeared to and torn out a chunk of everything that had made him so happy and, as it happened, oblivious to the truth for the better part of the past week and a half. “A week and a half,” he muttered aloud to himself, resisting the urge to bury his face in his palms.  
  
“Hm?”  
  
“Nothing,” Alan said, dismissing the question with a wave of his hand. Even if he told Sam the truth, it wouldn’t help ease his personal pain. He would only wind up double-burdened by both Clu’s betrayal and the undoubtedly furious reaction from Sam. Besides, he should have known better. It was his own fault for trusting the program that had imprisoned his best friend. He wanted to believe Clu could have changed, but what did he really think would happen? Did he believe, somehow, that the patience and affection he gave her would overcome whatever Kevin had accidentally written into her being to make her a murderous megalomaniac? Just because programs could come out of the computer, that didn’t make them real people; real people became bad on their own, they weren’t written that way.  
  
“Alan?”  
  
Alan looked up from the spot in the carpet that had held his attention for what felt like much too short a time to have missed anything significant. “Yes?”  
  
“Did you hear me?”  
  
He really didn’t have the slightest idea what Sam had said, but he felt like it was a question—something about the arcade, maybe. “Yeah,” he said with a nod.  
  
“Alright,” Sam said as he gathered his coat and turned for the door. “Then let’s go grab Quorra. We’ll end this, one way or another.” Alan could hear the hurt in his words, and for the first time it occurred to him that Sam might have begun to hope Clu could change, too.  
  
  
_____________  
  
  
  
The disc ripped through the air next to Clu’s head, close enough to feel the heat rolling off the live edge as it hit the side of the building and bounced back into the hand of its owner. Tron hadn’t wasted any time getting down to business; he wasn’t going for a quick derez, but he clearly had no intention of letting Clu walk away in one piece.  
  
“Fight back,” Tron growled past the distortion in his vocal process. A lingering reminder of the injury Clu had dealt him at the opening of the coup. It seemed Flynn wasn’t capable of fixing everything, even if he had managed to fish the monitor from the depths of the sea. Even the creator had his limits.  
  
Clu dodged an attack meant to take off his arm, but the effort cost him footing, and in the time it took to blink Tron was on him. He barely had time to duck and avoid losing his head. “Listen to me!” he shouted, but Tron didn’t even slow down. His next attack was an uppercut that, fortunately for Clu, lacked the disc. Of course that didn’t stop it from hurting. Clu went down hard, and Tron followed up without pause, landing a knee on the side of Clu’s throat as he pulled his disc and reactivated the edge. Clu tried to push the knee from his neck, but the pressure Tron was applying carried the full weight of all the rage and humiliation he had been forced to endure as a silent, helpless process buried in the back of Rinzler. He wasn’t going to be moved, and Clu knew it.  
  
“I never thought you would come back,” Tron said, and he slid the edge of his disc into the space between the side of his knee and Clu’s chin. “But I’m glad you did.”  
  
Clu tried to gurgle something meaningful—maybe an apology that he didn’t entirely mean—hoping there was a chance he could make Tron pause long enough to let him explain, but all that came out was a ragged sound vaguely reminiscent of Marv. Tron inched the disc closer to Clu’s neck. He was smiling. Clu turned his head to look away from the disfigured grin leering over him, unwilling to accept his final moments staring into the face of a traitor. Instead he looked up to the sky, and the towering spires of the skyscrapers that filled the city. Flynn might ruin it some day—probably sooner rather than later-but under his rule the Grid had been perfect. That would have to be enough.  
  
Almost immediately the shape of his own command vessel came into view over the top of a skyscraper. The pressure of Tron’s knee and the threat of his disc relented just long enough to let Clu gasp and roll away from the other program’s deadly hold. He pushed himself onto his hands and knees and crawled pathetically to the sidewalk, away from Tron’s anger and what he _knew_ was about to step down out of that ship. He couldn’t decide which he feared more, and the thought of fearing either was almost enough to make him wish Tron had finished the job. A pair of restraints were locked around his wrists as he sat gasping pathetically against the wall of the building.  
  
“Flynn,” Tron acknowledged with a nod as the ship landed in the middle of the wide street. His manner toward Flynn was that of an obedient servant, rather than a trusted companion. It made Clu wonder just how much of Rinzler remained behind after Flynn’s changes. Tron docked his disc and moved immediately to the user’s side. “I’ve neutralized Clu. He has no weapon,” he reported dutifully.  
  
“It’s fine. At ease, buddy,” Flynn muttered as he stepped down from the bottom stair. Two sentry escorts and some sort of adjunct joined him a moment later, and Clu spared them all a contemptuous glare. “Wow!” Flynn stopped short when he spied his program hunched against the wall. “What happened to you?”  
  
“Your son,” Clu said. Or he tried to.  
  
Flynn scratched his beard thoughtfully. “It used Quorra as a template for basic code, huh? That’d be an interesting phenomenon to study.”  
  
“Dissecting my misfortune will have to wait, Flynn,” Clu warned. “I came here with a user—”  
  
Flynn raised a hand to silence Clu, then pointed up. Clu followed his gaze as a second vehicle—a recognizer this time—swung into view and began its descent, landing just a few yards away from the command ship. When the carriage reached the pavement it revealed Ed cowering in the center, escorted by two more unmasked sentries. At the sight of Flynn his eyes grew wide, and he stuttered to a halt at the lip of the carriage. It only took a few fleeting seconds for him to regain his composure and assess what had very clearly taken place before his arrival. Once he had figured it out his eyes met Clu’s, and the hint of a smile tugged at the corners of his mouth before he turned to Flynn in apparent awe and relief. Clu groaned quietly.  
  
“I’m so glad I found you!” Ed exclaimed, stumbling down from the carriage with what could only be practiced awkwardness. Clu had watched the user often enough to know he never took a step without sure footing. The effort he made to disarm Flynn was oddly respectable. “You have to stop her!” He pointed to Clu, who only shook his head and waited to see what Ed had in store to twist the situation in his favor.  
  
“Calm down, son.” Flynn put a hand on Ed’s shoulder to calm him, which was absolutely unnecessary, but it played right into Ed’s plan, apparently. “What’s your name?”  
  
“Edward-d—” Ed stuttered on the end of his own name, as though he had meant to continue, but thought better of it at the last second. Clu found that curious. He tried to recall Ed’s last name, but he couldn’t remember ever hearing it used in the office. In fact, most of the time it seemed that Ed only managed to show up when Alan or Sam were absent. “Just Ed is fine, sir,” Ed finished. He turned to look at Tron, and recoiled uncomfortably when the program returned his stare.  
  
“Ed,” Flynn repeated. “Ed, what happened? How did you two get here?”  
  
 _Typical_ , thought Clu. Flynn immediately rallied behind his own kind, rather than the program who had carried out his every wish and followed his vision down to the most minute detail.  
  
Ed’s shoulders heaved with a great sigh, and he looked over at Clu as though he feared reprisal. That, at least, should have been a legitimate concern, even if the user wasn’t presently aware of it. “There was a struggle… I think she was trying to destroy the computer.” He pointed at Clu, who resisted the temptation to make a rude gesture in his direction.  
  
“But how did you end up in the arcade?” Flynn asked, and for a moment Clu thought he detected a hint of doubt in his voice.  
  
It was quickly undone by Ed’s next words: “Sam asked me to go there. We’re friends,” he added quickly. That was all he needed to say. Flynn would never be swayed from his side as long as he believed Ed and Sam were close. Yet again Flynn's sentimentality would lead him astray.  
  
Clu started looking for avenues of escape; with Tron so close, he couldn’t possibly hope to make a dead run, and there were plenty of sentries to help the monitor cover any attempts by Clu to utilize the labyrinth of streets to evade pursuit. He couldn’t hope to fight without a disc, though if he acted quickly there was a slim chance he could relieve one or two of the sentries of their batons. He was just about to make a move toward the closest program when Ed spun one final, damning lie.  
  
“I’m... sorry about what happened your son, Mr. Flynn.”  
  
The sudden shift in the surrounding Gridspace struck like lightning. Flynn froze in place, and for an uncomfortably tense few seconds it seemed as though he had simply stopped breathing. He looked from Tron, to Ed, and then finally turned to Clu. “Where’s Sam?” Flynn demanded.  
  
Clu couldn’t actually say where Sam was, he only knew where he had been. “Encom,” he said honestly. It was the best he could offer. He lifted his cuffed hands and shrugged.  
  
Obviously that wasn’t enough. “He wouldn’t send you in here alone,” Flynn said. He shuffled over to Clu and knelt down in front of him. The tail of his long white coat pooled on the pavement around his boots. “What did you do to him, Clu?”  
  
“I didn’t do anything, he's lying! This isn’t even _about_ Sam—”  
  
“What did you do!?” Following his third demand for information, Flynn stood and began to pace. Behind him Tron waited, tense and ready, anxiously anticipating the command to strike. The sentries also had hands on their weapons. Unarmed and cuffed, the five of them would cut him down in the time it took to reach the closest alley. Over where he was standing Ed seemed on the verge of laughter, but he _somehow_ managed to contain himself.  
  
The only thing Clu knew to do was tell the truth. He hated falsifying data, anyway. “I came into the system without his knowledge,” he admitted. “But I had to—I had to!” he protested when Flynn shook his head and stood to turn away. “This user came with me, _he_ wants to destroy the system, not me—why would I want to destroy my—Flynn, listen to me.” When that wasn’t enough Clu dragged himself to his feet and stood before his user. “Sam is fine, Flynn. I haven’t done anything to him. You have to _listen to me_.”  
  
Flynn looked up at the sky and shook his head again. “No more, Clu.” He looked sadly upon his program, and a sickening ribbon of fear began to wind itself into a knot in the pit of Clu’s stomach. He started to panic as Flynn continued; “I wanted to believe that I could right my wrongs,” he said quietly. “I thought… maybe if I admitted my own mistakes, that you would let me help you overcome yours. I thought I had let you down, Clu. And I blamed myself,” he said. “Up ‘til now I kept hoping you could be saved.”  
  
When Flynn looked back down at Clu, all the mirth and endless patience Clu had come to expect from his user had evaporated. In its place only cold resolve remained.  
  
Flynn waved a hand in his direction as he walked away toward the command ship. “Get rid of him,” he ordered. Then he disappeared behind the advancing shape of Tron.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi guys, it's currently January 21, 2014. I just want to let the people following this story know that I am still updating. I won't leave it unfinished. I've just been working a lot lately and I have very little time to write. I am currently about halfway through the next chapter right now, so hopefully it will be ready soon. I just don't want to rush and give you a piece of crap.


	12. Chapter 12

Clu lurched back against the wall, desperate to take a breath after a punch to the gut from Tron knocked the wind out of him. It was a terrible feeling. He bent over with his head between his knees and wheezed the pathetic gasps he could manage before another blow from Tron sent him down again. “Wait,” he gasped. “Flynn— _wait_.” The words came out as dry exhales that cost more than they were worth, since Tron and Flynn obviously didn’t feel they were worth much of anything. Tron grabbed the back of Clu’s neck and hauled him up, only to change his mind and instead push him face-first to the ground. When Clu looked up, Tron’s feral smirk greeted him. _I should have derezzed him outright, instead of just kicking him around,_ he thought regretfully. He wouldn’t be able to reason with Tron, but his experiences with Flynn in the past provided a possible way out of being beaten to death. “Is this what you’ve become, Flynn? Reacting without bothering to stop and consider the consequences?” Tron tried to silence him with a heel to the side of his head, but Clu only rolled over and continued to taunt his user through the blinding pain. “Of course, how could I forget,” he groaned. “You’ve _always_ been that way.”  
  
Sometimes his understanding of Flynn was actually more of a blessing than a curse. He heard the shuffle of boots on the slick pavement, and the angry whir of Tron’s disc ground to a halt. For a moment the Grid was silent. “So talk,” came the response from Flynn. “I’m listening.”  
  
“I really don’t think we should—” Ed tried to interject, but a sharp laugh from Clu stopped him.  
  
“Of course _you_ don’t,” he said as he rolled onto his stomach and pushed himself onto his hands and knees. The flat of Tron’s boot on his back stopped any attempt to stand. “Because then Flynn might figure out you’re full of shit.” Clu paused to silently thank Sam for helping to expand his vocabulary, even if he had ruined his life in nearly every other way. “Wouldn’t he?”  
  
A frustrated growl cut through the silence as Tron’s disc flashed to life, and he reared back to aim a vicious kick at Clu’s shoulder that sent him sprawling backwards. “Enough!” he shouted.  
  
Flynn moved to intervene, but it was too late; Tron clearly had enough of Rinzler left in him to know an enemy when he saw one, and to register an opportunity when one was bound and helpless on the ground before him. He lunged, and Clu was barely able to scramble aside to avoid having a hole punched through his chest. The situation only became worse when Tron split his discs and began using one as a projectile while he continuously jabbed at Clu’s vital spots with the other. “Call him off!” Clu demanded. “Flynn!” He stumbled backwards to get away from Tron, putting himself right in the path of a returning disc when the heel of his shoe caught the edge of the sidewalk. The disc grazed the side of his head and sheered off a lock of hair, and the burn it left behind made Clu wince with remembered pain at his injuries obtained in the user world. If he hadn’t been repaired by the system’s restore function, he might have been able to use his injury as proof of Ed’s sinister intentions. And if he’d had a disc, he could have simply _shown_ Flynn the truth. But could-haves weren’t going to keep the next disc from lodging itself firmly in his skull. “Flynn, tell him to stop!”  
  
“Keep going!” Ed shouted over Clu’s objections, and Tron obeyed. Of course he obeyed. He blindly followed the whims of users, like a good dog should. He only paused long enough to call one of the sentries over to his side.  
  
“Uncuff him,” Tron commanded. The unlucky program looked terrified to have been involved in the proceedings in any way, but after a moment of staring fearfully at Tron he nodded and rushed to obey the order.  
  
Flynn seemed unable—or perhaps unwilling—to intervene on Clu’s behalf. His face was a chaotic jumble of emotions; confusion, anguish, and when their eyes met, Clu was almost certain he saw doubt, too. Well, Clu reasoned, if he was going to die, at least his death might teach Flynn a lesson for once.  
  
“I’m going to fight for my life, I assume?” he asked as a baton was tossed to him by the sentry. He recalled a similar scenario occurring between himself, Jarvis, and Sam, what felt like a lifetime ago. Things really would have been so much simpler if Sam had just had the decency to die there on the light cycle grid.  
  
“My order to derez you hasn’t been rescinded. This is your execution, but there’s no reason you can’t make it a little interesting.”  
  
Clu hefted the baton in his hand and shrugged. He probably didn’t stand a chance. Whatever Flynn had done to free Tron’s code had left behind all the cunning and cruelty of Rinzler, with Tron’s insufferable moral righteousness piled on top. Still, stranger things had happened, and most of them recently. “Alright, then. Ready?”  
  
Tron planted his feet flat on the pavement and swung his arms into his preferred battle posture. After so many cycles watching Rinzler strike the same pose before aggressively derezzing his opponents, it was almost odd to see him take that stance up close and in person. “I’m always ready,” he said with a smile.  
  
Clu returned a grin of his own, laced with more meaning than Tron could probably grasp. “History might say otherwise.”  
  
It had probably been a mistake to taunt his already enraged, one-time friend. Tron came at him in a whirlwind of rage, and Clu nearly died twice just trying to back up in heels. “What’s wrong, Clu? You don’t seem like yourself.”  
  
“I missed your jokes, Tron,” Clu jeered. He flung aside one of Tron’s discs with the end of his baton when the monitor made to advance through an opening Clu had left for him. “It’s so much more entertaining than that broken rattle.”  
  
Tron lunged again, this time forcing Clu back against the wall to avoid a swing aimed at his midsection. Clu tried to escape being pinned by dodging to the right, but his path was blocked by Tron’s leg, where he had planted his foot firmly against the wall. His left side was blocked by an outstretched arm ending in a disc. Unless he was willing to derez Tron, which wouldn't help his cause at all at the moment, he was forced to stand down.  
  
“ _Game over_ ,” Tron declared triumphantly.  
  
  
_____________  
  
  
  
Sam took the stairs first, running down two at a time before he leapt into the room. He didn’t think Dillinger and Clu would still be there, but he figured it was best to be prepared, just in case. As he expected, the office was empty when he entered. “They’re not here,” he called over his shoulder to Alan and Quorra. “Ten bucks says they’re already inside.”  
  
“I could go in and make sure Flynn is alright,” Quorra suggested. “That was the original plan.”  
  
“Yeah, but Clu _and_ Ed are in there now,” Sam reminded her. “Not that Ed’s much of a threat on his own, but together? Besides, I told dad I’d keep you safe. Sending you in there with those two isn’t exactly sticking to that promise.”  
  
Alan went straight for the computer when he entered the basement. “Is this it?” he asked, eyes locked on the machine as he blew past Quorra and Sam. He brushed a hand over the console and smiled. “I can see your dad spent a lot of time tinkering with this.”  
  
“Inside and out,” said Sam. “And every minute we spend out here means hours in there. We gotta make a plan.”  
  
“Couldn’t we just stop them from here?” Alan asked. He tapped the screen with his finger, and a small cloud of dust floated up into the light around his hand. “Would it hurt the programs?”  
  
“At this point, I really don’t give a damn,” Sam told him with a shrug.  
  
“Sam, we don’t know—”  
  
“Spare me, Alan. I know you and Clu are buddies now, but he’s in there with my dad, and that can really only mean one thing. If you know how to delete him from here, then go for it.”  
  
Alan looked horrified at the suggestion. He turned back to the screen for a moment before looking up and shaking his head. “Deleting Clu might not stop whatever Ed is planning. Besides, I don’t think your father would want to know you and I participated in a murder.”  
  
“He’s just a program, Alan. It’s not really… I mean it’s different.” The denial didn’t sit well, even with Sam. He was having a hard time convincing himself that he was right, despite his angry insistence that Clu’s life, and the life of the other programs on the Grid, meant nothing compared to the safety of his father. It wasn’t that he cared about any of them, especially Clu, but something in the back of his mind kept telling him to take a second and actually think about what was going on. The problem was that every time he tried, all he could think of was that he had _trusted_ Clu. In the face of all the reasons he shouldn’t have, he gave the program a second chance—a chance he really, _really_ didn’t deserve. Then, after everything they had been through, Clu still betrayed him. That was unforgivable, and if his dad was hurt, if Clu thought he’d be able to just walk back in and take over again, he had another thing coming. Using that conviction to strengthen his resolve, Sam forced himself to ignore that little voice and focus on his anger. “Do it, or get out of the way so I can.”  
  
“I’m not going to delete Clu,” said Alan. “I won’t be party to that, and neither will you. Not if there’s another way to handle this.”  
  
“I’ve tried the other way! It almost got all three of us killed, remember? This isn’t a game, Alan. You can’t pop in a quarter and hit continue when you’ve got a disc in your back.”  
  
Alan positioned himself between Sam and the computer—as though Sam would actually fight him over it. “This is stupid,” Sam muttered. He took off his jacket and tossed it onto the couch, where it landed on top of a tangle of cables and the same rumpled drop cloth that covered most of the furniture. It was only then that he noticed the objects strewn about the room, instead of tucked into crates and piled in the corners where they had been. There was a lamp lying broken on the floor, and the side of the console was pulled open. It looked like someone had started to ransack the room, but none of his father’s notes had been touched, and all the equipment was still covered in a thick layer of dust. “Quorra, did this place look trashed last time you were here?” he asked.  
  
Quorra eyed the same path of destruction around the room and shook her head. “No, it wasn’t like this.”  
  
“What’s wrong?” Alan demanded. “What’s different?”  
  
“Not much, but…” Sam made his way over to where the lamp had fallen next to the computer. The overhead lights provided just enough illumination to reveal blood smeared on the wall and the side of the desk. “Alan, come here.”  
  
Alan’s head appeared over the side of the desk. “Is that blood?”  
  
“Yeah. And it looks pretty fresh.” That nagging voice returned twice as strong, and Sam finally allowed himself to set aside his anger long enough to consider that maybe Clu wasn’t to blame, after all. Then again, it was always possible that Ed had the victim, and Clu was just as terrible as Sam wanted to believe. It was impossible to know for sure anymore.  
  
Quorra squeezed in beside Sam. “I think it’s clear one of them wasn’t here by choice,” she said. “So what are we going to do?”  
  
There was no way to justify doing away with Clu without knowing for sure what had happened. No matter how much he wanted to write the program off and be done with the whole mess. “I’ll go,” he said. “One of us has to, and I won’t send either of you. So I’ll go.”  
  
“What will you do if you find Clu?” Alan asked. “Sam—”  
  
“I’m not gonna do anything. Unless he really did go in to try and get dad—then I’m gonna kill him.”  
  
Alan seemed to consider the sincerity of Sam’s threat before he nodded. “I suppose there’s nothing I can say that will convince you otherwise. Just be careful, Sam.”  
  
“I’m always careful.”  
  
Quorra gave him an incredulous glance that said she didn’t quite agree. “We’ll keep the portal open for you,” she promised.  
  
He turned the laser to face the corner next to the computer, rather than the space in front of the console. The last thing they needed was to accidentally send all three of them inside. “Alright,” he announced, bouncing on his toes and stretching his arms like he was getting ready to run a marathon. “Let’s do this. Beam me up. Beam me in? I don’t—”  
  
  
_____________  
  
  
  
Clu rolled his eyes at Tron’s idea of a clever quip. _This_ would _be how it ends_ , he thought bitterly. Trapped like an animal by the hyper-aggressive remodel of his tortured enemy. The Iso might have called it justice. Sam would have just laughed.  
  
“Would you like to try again?” Tron asked. “Or should I just end it on…”  
  
The silence was almost more alarming than the wide-eyed stare Tron aimed at the top of Clu’s head. He stood up straight and grabbed Clu by the shoulders, pressing him against the wall as he peered at the spot where the disc had grazed Clu’s left temple. “What—”  
  
“ _No,_ ” Tron muttered, releasing Clu and stepping back several paces. “No, that’s not possible.”  
  
Clu reached up and pressed his fingers to the injury; he’d been cut by discs before, it was nothing new. The damage could be repaired easily, and then the jagged opening sealed up again like it never happened. Only this time he didn’t touch a sharp, warm crack in his render. Beneath the fringe of sheered hair his skin was sore, and a sticky substance covered the spot under his fingers. He pulled his hand away and stared at the smear of red on his skin.  
  
Flynn pushed his way through the gathered sentries and looked over Tron’s shoulder. “What’s going on?”  
  
“ _How?_ ” Tron demanded, plainly horrified.  
  
Clu couldn’t answer him. The dawning horror of _why_ everything had been so strange when he returned to the system hit him all at once, and he thought he might be sick from the sudden understanding. He had no disc because he wasn’t a program anymore, and the disc he’d had when he left no longer existed. The Grid didn’t know to give him a suit, or a coat, or even reset his physical parameters because _he wasn’t part of the Grid anymore_. Oh, he was still connected; the rush of data that had filled him like a vast ocean in a single swell had made that abundantly, painfully clear. But he was as much a user as Flynn and Sam, and maybe the Iso, for that matter. She was fortunate that Clu had rushed headlong into the system and made the terrible discovery first. Resentment warred with fear, and Clu had to shut his eyes against the suddenly too-bright lights burning into him from every direction. His mind was racing, and he could barely think past his panic as Flynn bustled over to take a look for himself. For a moment Clu felt relieved, even a little grateful; Flynn would have an answer. Whether or not Clu liked what he had to say, Flynn would know what was going on.  
  
  
_____________  
  
  
  
Sam had to fight a small surge of panic when he appeared in the arcade replica. The memory of battling his way through Grid was made painfully fresh standing there again, especially since he hadn’t really expected to be back so soon. He would never admit it to anyone else, but he was relieved when Quorra initially suggested she should be the one to go back in. As much as he would have loved to take her up on that offer, it wouldn’t have been right. This was his responsibility.  
  
He quickly made his way outside, noting that the sky seemed blessedly free of ships, and there were no sentries patrolling the streets. The first programs he encountered were laughing and talking amongst themselves as they strolled down a main street, which was a good sign, but not necessarily confirmation that Clu wasn’t in power again. Sam couldn’t be certain how much time had passed between whenever it was Ed and Clu entered the system, but if anyone could do a lot with a little, it was Clu.  
  
Eventually, after walking across what felt like half the city, Sam came upon a program standing watch on a street corner. He was dressed like one of the sentries, but his circuits were blue. A _very_ good sign. Sam wondered if it was worth the risk to strike up a conversation, maybe even reveal himself as a user. If his dad was in charge, would the sentry take him to wherever he was? It was worth a shot, and the program was alone; if things got dicey, he could always just do it the hard way. As usual.  
  
“Hey!” Sam called out to the program. He put his hands up to show he wasn’t armed as he approached from the opposite side of the street. “I need some help.”  
  
“How can I assist you, program?” the sentry asked.  
  
Sam hesitated briefly, and then decided to throw caution to the wind. “I’m not a program,” he said. The echo of his first encounter with sentries was not lost on him, and he winced just a bit. “I’m a user. I need to find Kevin Flynn.”  
  
The sentry seemed to stop and process the information, staring dully at Sam like he was lost in thought before he stood at attention and nodded. “Follow me,” he said, and turned around to march in the direction of the city center.  
  
“Okay,” Sam said with a nod. “Cool.”  
  
So far, his second experience on the Grid was shaping up to be a lot better than the first.  
  
  
_____________  
  
  
  
“I don’t know,” Flynn admitted with a shrug. He was kneeling in front of Clu, who had decided to sit on the curb, since the lights of the skyscrapers around him apparently refused to stop spinning. His panic had subsided a bit, gradually replaced by indignant anger as Flynn poked and prodded at him. “I can’t explain it. Changing your render’s a pretty simple leap to make—it used Quorra as a template because you’re just a program… but…”  
  
Clu tried not to wince at the casual dismissal of his existence as _just a program_. Something Flynn never seemed to realize he was doing. It wasn’t surprising that more than a thousand cycles cut off from everything hadn’t managed to drive that point home. For a second Clu was tempted to take the baton still in his hands and— No. He’d promised Sam his father wouldn’t be harmed. That was the deal: Flynn left, Clu came back, everything went back to the way it had been.  
  
Could it, though?  
  
“But this, this is something else,” Flynn continued. “You should’ve reverted back.” He slapped his palms against his thighs and mumbled something to himself. “Maybe if we got you a disc, I could poke around a bit…”  
  
“No.” Clu wouldn’t allow it. Showing Flynn his memories to prove his innocence would have been one thing. Allowing his traitorous user access to his code was entirely different.  
  
“If Flynn wants to access your code,” Tron began, but Flynn stopped him.  
  
“It’s okay,” he said. “I understand.”  
  
That was doubtful. “Do you?” Clu asked. The question wasn’t meant to be answered, and Flynn seemed to realize that. He stood up and signaled one of the sentries over. “We’re going to the portal. All of us,” Flynn told him. “See to it that—”  
  
“Apologies, sir,” a second sentry interjected. “Another user is present on the Grid.”  
  
Flynn looked from the sentry to Tron, who nodded. “It’s Sam.”  
  
“How do _you_ know that?” Clu asked. He hadn’t even been aware of Sam’s presence the first time, and they had programs crawling all over the Grid then.  
  
Tron glared at Clu, clearly reluctant to answer his question, but in the end he caved. “He flagged down one of the peace sentries on a street corner in Epsilon District. I just received the information a nano ago.”  
  
“ _Peace sentries?_ ” Clu scoffed. “I see I’ll be scrubbing your presence out of here for a while.”  
  
Tron pulled his disc and postured threateningly. “Be quiet!”  
  
“Don’t tell users what to do!” Clu snapped.  
  
“Alright,” Flynn said, making soothing gestures in an effort to calm both programs. “We’ll wait for Sam to come here, _then_ we’ll all go to the portal. Together.”  
  
That didn’t fit with Clu’s plans. He wasn’t going back out there again, not if it meant being trapped in a body of flesh, blood, and other alarming fluids. Sure, sex was fun, and he had grown rather fond of eating, but that was nothing compared to what he’d lose by allowing himself to remain corrupted. “I’m staying,” he informed both Tron and Flynn. “Sam promised me the Grid, and I upheld my end of the deal.”  
  
For a moment it seemed like Tron might just explode from the sheer force of his rage. As it was he almost vibrated in place, staring at Clu as though he could derez him with nothing more than the power of his hatred. Flynn was obviously too shocked to say anything. He stood with his mouth hanging open and his eyes squeezed into thin lines as he stared in total confusion. Things seemed at the edge of an explosive collapse when Sam finally deigned to make his appearance. He called out from the carriage of a recognizer as it descended from overhead, landing beside the crowd of programs and users gathered for what had been Clu’s execution only moments before.  
  
“Gang’s all here, huh?” Sam quipped breathlessly as he jogged over to join them. “Hey dad!”  
  
“Sam!” Flynn threw his arms out wide and embraced his son. They patted each other on the back affectionately, and Clu thought he heard one of them sniffle. Clu rolled his eyes and sighed at their melodramatic runion.  
  
“Sorry I’m late,” said Sam when they finally released each other. “It’s been a crazy few weeks. How are things here?”  
  
Flynn beamed a smile at Sam and gestured to the gathered crowd of programs. “Just fine! We’ve made a lot of progress in just a few cycles. Haven’t we, guys?”  
  
None of the sentries responded.  
  
“Still working on them. They’re getting it, though. Re-learning things all the time. So,” he put an arm around Sam and steered him toward the scene of Clu sitting on the curb, and Tron looming over him. “Any idea what this is all about?”  
  
Sam gave Clu a quick once-over and frowned. “What the hell happened to you? You look like shit.”  
  
“Thank you, I feel like shit. _He_ happened to me.” Clu pointed up to Tron.  
  
“Hey, you got him back!” Sam, apparently forgetting all about Clu, loped over to where Tron was standing. He peered at him searchingly, as though he didn’t quite trust what he was seeing. “Tron?”  
  
“Hello, Sam Flynn.”  
  
“Pretty cool,” Sam muttered. “Sorry about all the, uh…” he made punching gestures and shrugged. “You know.”  
  
Tron shook his head. “You never landed a single hit on me.”  
  
“I don’t think—well, okay.” Sam turned back to Clu. “So, what the hell happened? Why was there blood in the arcade?”  
  
Finally, someone bothered to ask Clu _his_ side of the story. Rather surprising that it would be Sam; Clu assumed he would have been the first to jump on the bandwagon to condemn him out of spite. “Do you want details, or just the bare facts?”  
  
“Facts. And make it quick.”  
  
Flynn inserted himself in the conversation, standing beside Sam where he could observe everyone. Tron remained where he was, making his presence felt without doing anything at all, apart from glaring. “Well,” Clu began, “I was waiting for Alan to come back. Ed appeared, and demanded that I show him where the computer was hidden. We fought—”  
  
“Like a _fight_ -fight? And how do you even know him?”  
  
“Do you want me to tell you what happened, or not?” Clu snapped at Sam. Sam held his hands up defensively and gestured for Clu to continue. “He made me go with him to the arcade, and I realized there that he intended to destroy the Grid—I think his target was Flynn. So I stopped him the only way I could. You should thank me.” It was a very brief retelling of the major events that led to their current situation, and Clu would’ve liked to have been more detailed, but he had a feeling things would only continue to work in his favor for so long. “He convinced your father I’d done something to hurt you. I was _going_ to be executed by Tronzler there.”  
  
“It’s _Tron_ ,” came the snarled reply. “And no one said you won’t still be executed, user or not.”  
  
“Now who’s the despot, Tron?”  
  
Sam stepped in to quiet them both. “Whoa, hang on a second. What does that mean?”  
  
It was Flynn’s turn to speak. He leaned down and brushed back the hair that still covered Clu’s left temple. Clu started to pull away, but he stopped when Sam knelt down to examine his open wound. “Wow. _Wow_. I didn’t know that would happen.”  
  
“Which makes two of us,” Clu groused. “Now that you know about Ed—”  
  
“I’m still not totally sure I believe you.” Sam craned his head back and looked around the gathered group, searching for the other user. “I wanna know what Dillinger has to say for himself.”  
  
Flynn turned and looked at Sam. “ _Dillinger?_ As in Edward?”  
  
Sam nodded. “Junior. He’s Encom’s programming golden boy. Has a face that begs to get punched.” He stopped looking long enough to shrug at his father. “We don’t exactly get along. Where the hell is he?”  
  
Flynn, Tron, and Clu all looked to the spot where Ed had been standing. He was gone.


	13. Chapter 13

“Do you believe me _now?_ ” Clu shouted.  
  
Flynn tilted his head thoughtfully and muttered, “Well, I suppose I have to.” He then turned to Sam and asked, “So that was Dillinger’s son? When did that happen?”  
  
“I guess about thirty years ago, dad,” Sam answered. He gestured to the gathered sentries, who seemed content to stand around until someone noticed them. “Can you get these guys out searching for him? Ed can’t make it to the portal on his own, right? Does he even know where it is?” The last question was directed at Clu, who only held his arms out and shrugged.  
  
“I didn’t know Dillinger was interested in anything but money. And his son works for Encom?” Flynn shook his head and chuckled. “They never learn.”  
  
Sam divested the closest sentry of its baton, thanking the program with a backwards nod before he began inspecting the device, trying to remember how it worked. He couldn’t actually recall how he had produced a light cycle from the last one, and he’d never thought to ask anyone about it. Of course it would have been a simple matter to just ask, but he didn’t want to admit his ignorance in front of Clu, who was watching his every move, as though he already knew Sam was floundering. “It’s not like the Flynn legacy is faring much better,” he reminded his father absently. “Are all these the same or are there different sticks for different things?” Sam admitted finally. “Someone gimme some help here.”  
  
“You don’t have a disc,” Clu and Tron informed him in unison.  
  
“Your permissions are stored on your disc,” Clu continued on his own after a smug glance in Tron’s direction. “Without a disc, you can’t operate any vehicles. You also can’t access any weapon files.” He froze for a moment before pointing an accusing finger at Tron and shouting, “You gave me a baton knowing full well I couldn’t use it!”  
  
“Why would I give you a weapon?” Tron asked with an indifferent shrug. “I was told to get rid of you, not arm you.”  
  
Sam was forced to place himself between the two of them before a fight broke out and one or both ended up needing medical attention… or recoding. He didn’t doubt Clu could call up _something_ to use as a weapon if he really wanted to—he was eerily resourceful even without the Grid thinking he was a user—and they had bigger problems anyway. “Worst case scenario,” he began, looking back and forth between the two of them, “Ed gets out and kills us all. That’s what we have to worry about right now. Okay?”  
  
His appeal for peace went ignored by both programs. Sam looked to his father for assistance. “You came alone?” the old man asked instead.  
  
“No I came with Alan and—” Sam shot Clu a warning glare when he groaned melodramatically. “And Quorra. Shut up, Clu.”  
  
“They’re waiting out there, then?” his father asked. “You think they can stop him if he does make it out?”  
  
“You have Tron, his loyal minions, and every sentry on the Grid at your disposal, and you can’t stop one user?” Clu scoffed. “That’s pathetic.”  
  
“Didn’t you have the same thing when we slipped past you? And a big huge ship?” Sam shot back. “How did he even get you here in the first place? Stop talking.”  
  
“No.”  
  
“Flynn, let me derez him,” Tron growled. “He isn’t really a user. This is just a trick.”  
  
“You think so? I hope you have a mop,” Clu muttered.  
  
Sam was at the end of his rope, about to explode at one or both of the programs, when his father finally stepped in and put his foot down. “Enough, both of you. Sam’s right, we have bigger things to worry about. You two can duke it out when this is all over.”  
  
Tron immediately backed off, though he maintained a dangerous glare aimed solely at Clu. Sam didn’t even seem to exist anymore, which was fine by him. It wasn’t too long ago that Rinzler had been using him as a kickball, and then hell-bent on hunting him down. He could still remember being close enough to feel that eerie rumble rattling through his bones. Being ignored was definitely preferable. “Okay, so how do we get an APB out on Ed?” Sam asked, shooting Tron a wary glance. “Or whatever you call it here.”  
  
“It’s already done,” Tron informed him. “My team will locate the user _‘Ed’_ and take him into custody.”  
  
That seemed uncharacteristically simple for the Grid. Sam looked at Clu, noting that he appeared annoyed, rather than relieved. “What’s your problem?” he asked. Without warning he was pulled to the side, with Clu pressed against his arm. It was awkward and uncomfortable, but he had a feeling Clu didn’t realize. Even if he did, he probably didn’t care.  
  
“I know you don’t have it in you to kill him,” Clu hissed in his ear, “so what exactly do you plan to do with Ed once you find him?”  
  
“We’re gonna…” Sam suddenly realized he had no idea what he planned to do with Ed. What _could_ they do? Clu was right, killing him was absolutely out of the question, and they couldn’t keep him on the Grid. Letting him go meant he was free to try again, or concoct some other diabolical plot, and no authority in the user world would recognize “tried to unplug a computer” as an offense worthy of incarceration. Sam turned to where his father and Tron were quietly discussing something with their heads bent low for privacy. They were totally oblivious to Clu and Sam standing side by side, watching them talk. After everything else, Sam had to ask his father if they were going to let Ed leave the Grid, and if not, what exactly they planned to do with him. It was gonna be one hell of a conversation with the old man.  
  
  
_____________  
  
  
  
Ed’s shoes made slick sounds on the pavement as he dashed from the mouth of one alley into the shadow of another, disappearing into the darkness and taking advantage of the overhang provided by an adjacent building to hide him from the vehicles floating overhead. He had a feeling they were looking for him; the others weren’t particularly clever individually, but together they would probably be able to connect the dots and figure out that Clu had been telling the truth all along. It wouldn’t take much time for Sam to let his full name slip to his father, either. Ed had grown up hearing about the lengths Kevin Flynn had gone to in order to discredit and destroy what Ed’s father had built at Encom. He was an unapologetic usurper, there was no reason to believe he wouldn’t turn around and kill the son of his former business rival, or trap him in a computer, which was essentially the same thing in Ed’s mind.  
  
“You there, program,” someone called to him. Ed spun around to find where he had entered the alley blocked by the bright blue outline of a man wielding something that looked like a staff. “Stop! That’s an order!” the man shouted. When Ed failed to comply, he started down the narrow alley in pursuit.  
  
In the time it took to turn away from the figure at his back toward the other end of the alley, two more neon warriors had appeared to block his path. Above them all a blue and white ship floated on glowing pylons, no doubt waiting to scoop him up. It was like being trapped in Ridley’s Scott’s imagination with no way out. “You got me,” he sighed bitterly, lifting his arms in surrender. “I give up.”  
  
“Where’s your disc, program?” the man at his back demanded.  
  
“My what?”  
  
“All programs are required to wear an identity disc. What happened to yours?”  
  
Ed glanced over his shoulder at the other two soldiers, who were no less menacing for their obnoxious blue and black neon uniforms. “I am not a program,” he said, turning back to the first one. “I don’t know what you would call me…” He’d heard them say it before, but the correct term slipped his mind just when he needed it most. “I _write_ programs.”  
  
“ _User!_ ” two of the programs uttered reverently.  
  
“My apologies,” the first program added quickly. “We were not aware there were any other users on the Grid. Is there any way we can assist you?”  
  
Ed lifted a hand to wave him off, but he stopped short of assuring the program that he was fine on his own. Their sudden attitude change was startlingly reminiscent of worshipful awe. He wondered if that be used to his advantage. “I need to leave,” he said, just to test the waters. When he received nothing but a blank stare in return, he added, “I want to go back to my user world. Can you help me?”  
  
“You require an escort to the portal?” one of the programs behind him asked. “We can take you there!”  
  
It was almost embarrassingly easy, Ed realized with a little jolt of elation. He could take out both Flynns, Clu, and their whole science project in one move. He even got to see exactly what it was Kevin Flynn had been up to for twenty years. The world was, admittedly, quite impressive. Maybe once the others were out of the way, he could appropriate whatever hardware they used to pop in and out of their little neon playground. There had to be an easy billion or two in a programmable alternate reality.  
  
“Your assistance is greatly appreciated,” he said with a smile, inclining his head to his new escorts. “So, how fast can you take me to this portal?”  
  
  
_____________  
  
  
  
Alan looked at his watch; Sam had only been gone three minutes and seven seconds. It seemed like a lot longer, though he had a feeling the total silence was part of that. He glanced up at Quorra. “Are those Kevin’s notes?” he asked when he noticed her flicking through a stack of papers.  
  
“I hope not…” she answered flatly.  
  
“What makes you say that?”  
  
“They seem to be crudely drawn naked women.”  
  
  
_____________  
  
  
  
“At least when I was trying to hunt you down and derez you, I _did something_. We’re wasting time!” Clu shouted at the collected sentries, Tron, and his user overlords. They all turned to regard him; Flynn were unreadable, Tron looked annoyed (still), and the sentries seemed like they might glitch out of confusion or fear. Maybe both. Sam only shook his head and frowned. Clu shrugged and slapped his palms down on his legs with a dramatic sigh. “How is it the creator, the hero of the Grid, and half the programs meant to protect it are gathered in a single location and you all can’t figure out where the enemy might be headed?”  
  
“I’m here too, you know,” Sam pointed out bitterly.  
  
“Yes, but your incompetence is typical. I generally expect better of the others.”  
  
Sam scowled and raised his middle finger—a gesture Clu cheerfully returned in kind. He was going to miss antagonizing Sam when they were all returned to their rightful places. Or dead. Although, he supposed being dead, he wouldn’t be conscious of missing anything. “Let’s split up and start sweeping the Grid for him. He can’t make it far on his own, and clearly your monitor teams aren’t what they used to be; or what they were before that.” Antagonizing Tron would have to do for a suitable replacement.  
  
“We’re not letting you out of our sight,” Tron snarled at him. “I personally guarantee the only way you’ll leave my custody is in a pile of cubes.”  
  
“That’s a good idea, actually,” Sam interrupted. “Not the cubes, sorry. We’ll split into teams of two. You and Clu go together, I’ll go with my dad. The more people out looking for Ed, the better our chances of finding him before he does something none of us can fix.”  
  
Tron seemed on the verge of exploding; his circuits burned a livid white, and his jaw was clenched so tight Clu thought he could see fractures forming in the other program’s teeth. As much as it amused him to watch Tron seethe furiously, Clu valued his continuing existence much more than his own entertainment. “I think it might be a good idea to rethink that a little,” he suggested. “I will go with you, and Flynn can go with Tron. He seems to have a handle on all of this,” Clu said, gesturing to Tron. “Besides, it’s our last time alone together,” he added with a sly smile. Sam’s sudden color change was more than enough payback for everything Clu had been through since returning to the system. “Also, I don’t trust him not to kill me.”  
  
Flynn shook his head slowly. “I don’t know,” he muttered.  
  
“He handled me just fine before.”  
  
Sam hissed, “ _Clu, give it a rest_.”  
  
“Well, I guess if Sam doesn’t have any objections. Are you alright with taking Clu?”  
  
Clu could see Sam cringe ever so slightly, and that by itself was worth whatever tantrum Sam might throw once they were alone. “I’m sure I’ll be fine under his—”  
  
“ _Clu_.”  
  
“—watchful eye.”  
  
If he only had a few hours left to live, he was going to spend them in a somewhat pleasant mood. Doing so at Sam’s expense was the best he could manage, under the circumstances.  
  
“Yeah,” Sam said, though only after leveling an exasperated stare at Clu. “I’m okay with it. We’ll take some sentries and have one of them contact you if we find Ed.”  
  
“Here.” Tron handed Sam a baton and a set of restraints. “If he gives you any trouble.”  
  
  
_____________  
  
  
  
“Be honest, does getting hunted, beaten, restrained, and racing against the clock to save your own life make you feel even a little bad about what you did to me and my dad?”  
  
“Not really.”  
  
Sam rolled his eyes; he wasn’t the least bit shocked by Clu’s apathy. “I didn’t think so,” he muttered under his breath. “You know Quorra tried to convince me you’d changed? I _almost_ believed her.”  
  
They had been walking down the same long street since parting ways with the others. Sam looked over his shoulder to check on the small cadre of sentries they’d taken with them; none of them seemed particularly anxious to come any closer than they currently were. From the moment they had started walking, the little cluster of programs kept dropping back until they had reached a distance of about thirty feet. Which was too far to be very useful in an ambush, and too close to give Sam the privacy he needed to lecture Clu for his “playful” antics earlier. Clu really had no concept of basic decency. Sam almost preferred getting punched in the face to being subtly humiliated in front of his own father.  
  
“You know,” Clu said suddenly, breaking the silence in his usual careless manner. “I wonder why you blame me for what happened.”  
  
Sam almost missed a step, and he caught Clu side-eyeing him in obvious amusement. “You mean that night at the house, or…?”  
  
“I mean with the coup. Believe it or not, my every thought is not consumed by the missed opportunity to have sex with you. Think about it this way, Sam: Flynn gave me a job to do, and I did it. Why are you so intent on holding that against me?”  
  
Sam almost couldn’t believe what he was hearing. Was Clu really asking why it was so bad to commit genocide and imprison the man who created him for twenty years? “Are you just incapable of understanding right and wrong?” he asked. “You killed the Isos. You took my dad from me.”  
  
“The Isos were a threat to the ideal your father created me to pursue. And if I had let him leave, he would have destroyed me. Maybe the whole Grid. My entire purpose, my reason for being. What would you have done?”  
  
“Probably not what you did!” Sam shouted. “But maybe that’s because I’m not a total monster.”  
  
“You call me a monster, but my intentions—”  
  
“Your intentions don’t mean shit,” Sam snapped bitterly. “Three weeks in the user world and you never picked up the expression ‘the road to hell is paved with good intentions?’”  
  
“Okay,” Clu said. He stopped walking and turned to face Sam. “What were Alan’s intentions?”  
  
“What?”  
  
“When he took over for your father. What were his intentions?”  
  
It was obvious Clu was leading Sam somewhere, but he wasn’t sure where, and he didn’t know if he’d like it. He decided to force the issue, instead of letting himself get dragged into a game—again. “Don’t ask stupid questions, Clu. What are you getting at?”  
  
“Alan took over Encom with every intention of carrying on your father’s legacy, and I assume preserving it for you. How did that go?”  
  
Sam was outraged on Alan’s behalf. How had Clu even heard about all that? “That wasn’t his fault,” he explained. “They made it impossible for him, and people were freaking out because dad was gone. He had a lot more to worry about than just his job. What did you expect him to do?”  
  
Despite his best efforts, Clu seemed to have walked Sam right to his point after all. “Flynn was so preoccupied with his little project that he was neglecting the Basics. The Grid was suffering. Programs didn’t know what to do, or what would happen to them; would they be deleted to make room for the Isos? There were rumors that your father would reshape the Grid just for them. Could you imagine what that was like? Your father had told me when we started—promised me—that we would build the perfect system. Then suddenly the Isos appeared, and he started to behave aberrantly; ignoring everything just to _watch them_ sometimes. I asked him that last night if he wanted me to continue, and do you know what he said?”  
  
Sam didn’t answer. He’d already heard the whole story, and he knew what was coming next.  
  
“What was I expected to do?”  
  
After an awkward pause in which Sam refused to meet Clu’s eyes, they continued walking. Sam stewed in his own righteous anger, trying to work around everything Clu had said. So maybe some of it made sense, and maybe Sam couldn’t explain why his father hadn’t just said _no_. That didn’t matter, though. It didn’t excuse what Clu had done to them. Finally he said as much. “I lost my father.”  
  
“I barely knew you existed,” Clu explained with a dismissive wave. “You didn’t know I existed at all. Would you have denied the Grid its creator? Or denied the Basics their very existence, just to keep your father around? What if he had left and decided to wipe them out just to make things easier for the Isos?”  
  
“You don’t know my dad if you think he would have done that.”  
  
“You don’t know your father if you think he _wouldn’t_.”  
  
That was enough for Sam. “Just stop talking,” he snapped. “I’m sick of listening to you. You act like a bunch of fucking computer programs are worth leaving a seven year old kid without the only thing he had left in the world. Fuck you.”  
  
“If we’re just programs, then why does it matter if I destroyed the Isos?”  
  
“Stop. Just… stop talking in circles. None of this changes anything,” Sam told him. “You can’t talk your way out of the past.”  
  
“Of course I can’t,” Clu admitted, much to Sam’s surprise. “None of us can change what happened. But you can’t just blame me and ignore everything that led up to it.” He stopped and pointed to a pair of sentries a block ahead. One was leaning against the wall of a building, watching the other toss his baton in the air over and over while he wandered back and forth along the sidewalk. “We should ask them if they’ve seen anything unusual.”  
  
“Yeah, hi, I’m a user and he’s your former dictator—don’t mind the tits, those are new. Have you seen anything weird lately?”  
  
“I meant someone running around without a disc,” Clu said. “Or circuits. Something like that. Try to take this seriously.”  
  
Sam shrugged off the criticism easily; he would volunteer to lock himself away on the Grid for twenty years before he took behavior lessons from Clu. “Whatever, let’s get this over with,” he muttered. “You can ask them.”  
  
Rather than object to being ordered around by Sam, Clu only nodded. He watched the two sentries with a thousand-yard stare that Sam was very familiar with from all the times he found himself lost in thought. “You know,” Clu said finally, “as much as I hate to admit it, the Iso was right. I have changed. But that doesn’t mean I would have done things any differently. We all did what we thought was right.” He turned and waved a hand at the sentries that had accompanied them, who were all huddled together several yards back. “Tell those useless cowards to stay there, then catch up to me.”  
  
Sam arched an eyebrow curiously. “I’m taking orders from you now?”  
  
“You are on _my_ Grid,” Clu reminded him.  
  
  
_____________  
  
  
  
“So, this portal. How far is it?” Ed asked the closest program. He was unable to tell them apart when they were masked, a fact he discovered after awkwardly carrying on a conversation with the wrong individual after a brief stop to pick up more escorts. He had no idea why they felt the need to pile on so many additional bodies; the vehicle they were flying already seemed ungainly enough without adding _more_ weight. Flynn, whom Ed assumed was the original designer, clearly had no knowledge of aerodynamics. Although the damn thing did seem to fly well enough, though for all he knew physics were meaningless fantasy inside a computer.  
  
“It’s not far now,” the program assured him. “I apologize for the length of our journey.”  
  
“As long as we’re close,” said Ed. He had work to do, after all. Of course, there was still Bradley and the pale girl to deal with, but that problem practically solved itself; Bradley had managed to oust himself from Encom’s controlling seat all on his own last time, odds were good he’d do it again. That, and his backwards ideas about open source software, would probably boost him into early retirement within a month or two. As for the girl, Ed had dealt with one of Sam Flynn’s groupies already. There was no reason the other should prove to be any more of a challenge than Clu had been.  
  
Finally, after what seemed like forever, the vehicle started to slow, and the thrust of the engines changed as they began their descent. He could feel the heat of whatever burned through the pylons as they roared toward the ground below. A cloud of steam kicked up around the carriage just before they finally touched down, forcing Ed to lean back from the edge to avoid a blast of hot air in his face for the second time that evening. “We’re here?” he asked the chatty program. He expected a reply as prompt and polite as all the others had been since they discovered his identity, but this time he was ignored. The other programs stepped off the vehicle one by one, leaving Ed alone, and suddenly feeling very uncertain about his choice to trust anything in Flynn’s digital world.  
  
“Greetings, user.”  
  
Ed peered out from the ship to find himself surrounded by a small sea of neon blue and white lines. In the center stood the man who looked alarmingly like a young Alan Bradley. The one Flynn had called Tron. “I assume you’re not here to help me reach this portal everyone keeps talking about.”  
  
“Not exactly,” Tron said with a shrug. “Restrain him.”  
  
Half a dozen sentries—including Ed’s friendly escorts—moved quickly to obey Tron’s command. They were on him so fast he barely had time to lift his arms, which were promptly shoved behind his back as whatever they used to restrain him locked into place. With two programs on either side, they walked him off the vehicle and over to Tron, who stood with his arms crossed, eyeing Ed with a condescending smirk that looked so much like Bradley, Ed found his lip curling into a bitter snarl. “Thank you for making it so easy,” Tron said.  
  
“Well, I am nothing if not considerate.”  
  
Clearly finished with the witty banter, Tron turned to his men. “I’ll let the others know that we’ve got him. Keep him here, and do not release him under any circumstances.” To Ed he added, “Knowing Flynn, I’m sure he’ll want to take you with him to the portal. But if he doesn’t, I give my word that you’ll be treated well while you’re on the Grid.”  
  
Something in Ed’s gut rolled over and died at those words, and he felt his legs go slack. If it hadn’t been for the programs holding him up at the shoulders, he would have dropped to his knees right there in the middle of the street. The idea of Kevin Flynn standing in judgement of him, to punish or release him as he saw fit… it wasn’t fair. It wasn’t _right_. “You can’t do this to me! Kevin Flynn has to pay!” Ed shouted at Tron’s back. His voice cracked, but he didn’t care. He turned to one of the sentries who held him up. “Take these off. I’m a user, right? You have to listen to me. That’s how it works! I’m Edward Dillinger, _you can’t do this to me!_ ”  
  
  
_____________  
  
  
  
“You knew they had him.” Clu stood with his arms crossed over his chest, staring defiantly at Tron. “You sent us off to chase down someone your monitors had already caught.”  
  
“As I recall, searching for the user was your idea,” Tron reminded him. “I was waiting for the word that they had him secured on a recognizer.”  
  
“You set this up so you could be the hero again. You just want to look good in front of Flynn.”  
  
Tron waved aside the accusation with his usual arrogant disregard for everything Cu said. “If Flynn is pleased with my efficiency, then I’m honored. But I only did my job. As for you…”  
  
Clu looked up pleadingly at Sam, who looked between them both and frowned. “You didn’t have to cuff him again,” he said to Tron. “He _was_ trying to help.”  
  
“I wasn’t told _not_ to restrain him,” said Tron. “Flynn will release him, if that’s what he thinks is best.”  
  
“Where is he anyway?” Sam turned around, looking for his father in the crowd. “I thought he’d be here.”  
  
“He went back to his safe house to collect something he called personal effects. It’s off the Grid, I don’t know how long he’ll be gone. I sent a team with him, though, he’ll be safe.”  
  
“Great. That means a drive through the Outlands,” Sam complained. “We’re gonna be here all night.”  
  
Clu sighed and leaned his head back against the wall. He wasn’t sure what Flynn would do with him; banishment to the user world was an obvious option, and not exactly the worst one Clu could think of. At least it meant staying with Alan. It no longer felt so strange to admit that he enjoyed the company of a user—or rather, another user. Since he was clearly no longer a program himself, it seemed inappropriate to refer to Alan, Sam, and Flynn as though they were some other form of life.  
  
When Sam wandered over and slid down the wall to sit next to him, Clu tried to broach the topic of his possible sentence. “What do you think Flynn will do with me?”  
  
“Uh, well…” Sam reached back and scratched his head, obviously stalling while he thought of an answer. “I really don’t know,” he admitted after a moment. “Why?”  
  
“I’d like to know if I’m going to be allowed to stay on the Grid, or if I’ll be banished to the user world. Or derezzed. Or locked away. Or—”  
  
“Relax. Dad’s not gonna do any of that,” Sam assured him. He was quiet for a moment before he added, “And I wouldn’t let him, anyway.”  
  
“Really?” To say he was skeptical of any promises Sam Flynn made would have been something of an understatement, given everything that had passed between them since they left the Grid. “And why would you do that?”  
  
“I was wrong,” Sam said matter-of-factly, and with no sarcasm that Clu could detect. “Not about you being a monster, I mean, and you’re still pretty fuckin’ terrible. Just… you’re right, it’s more complicated than just one choice. And I shouldn’t have gone back on my word to let you have the Grid. But I dunno how I’m gonna fix that one for you.”  
  
“I have a feeling I’ll have to share it no matter what,” Clu said, frowning at the back of Tron’s head. “Even if your father agrees to leave it in my hands, I still have _him_ to deal with.”  
  
“I figured you’d just derez Tron, honestly.”  
  
“The thought had crossed my mind. I don’t think Alan would appreciate it, though. He was very concerned about the changes I made to his program.”  
  
Sam made a strange sound and tilted his head to the side, much like Marv did when he didn’t understand what was going on around him. “You don’t think that might’ve been because you threw in his face how you’d rectified Tron? Just throwing that out there.”  
  
“Maybe,” Clu said. “We’re getting a long better now, though. _Much_ better,” he added with a sly grin.  
  
Sam slapped his hands over his ears and ducked his head between his knees. “Nope, don’t wanna hear any of that. You can stop right there.”  
  
“I’m sorry.”  
  
“For fuck’s sake, Clu, you can’t just—wait—what?”  
  
The bewildered expression and stunned silence from Sam really tied things up nicely, in Clu’s opinion. It was almost more gratifying than tormenting him with reminders of his many past failures. “You can apply that to anything you like,” he added a few minutes later, once the initial shock had worn off. “But you only get _one_.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There will be an epilogue, to be posted later this week as an additional chapter


	14. Epilogue

Clu could feel Alan’s hand on his head through the thick blanket. He hollowed his cheeks and sucked a little harder, drawing a heavy groan of approval.  
  
“You don’t have to— _god_ —you don’t have to be under there,” Alan informed him.  
  
Taking the time to swallow down to the base before coming back up, Clu grunted his objection. “It’s cold out there,” he said finally, and with the head of Alan’s cock still against his lips. “It’s warm under here.”  
  
“Can’t you just change the temperature?” Alan asked. The sound was slightly muffled by the blanket between them.  
  
Clu shrugged; he had no idea if Alan could tell, but it hardly mattered. Meaningless gestures seemed to have become a normal part of his life since leaving the Grid. “Programs complain. I didn’t even know they could feel temperature. I don’t remember ever noticing.” He wrapped his lips around the shaft of Alan’s cock and mouthed his way down one side and back up again.  
  
The slight tremor in Alan’s leg made Clu smile; he was so sensitive.  
  
“Come out from under there,” Alan demanded in a rough, low voice that promised it would be worth braving the cold.  
  
Clu took one last swipe with his tongue before wiggling his way out from under the blanket. Face-to-face with Alan, he kissed his way up from under his chin, stopping with their lips pressed together. “You called.”  
  
“You know, at some point we have to sit down and try to work things out with Tron. I promised Kevin.”  
  
Clu rolled his eyes and dropped his forehead to Alan’s chest. The idea of counseling sessions with Tron, even ones refereed by Alan, made him want to throw _himself_ into the Sea of Simulation. Both Clu and Tron had admin access now, was it really necessary to make them work together? As far as he was concerned, not living under the constant threat of a disc in his back was progress. “Do we really have to talk about this now?” he asked. Having just come up from giving Alan a blowjob, the timing seemed mildly inopportune. Alan chuckled, and Clu shot up from his chest to glare angrily. “ _What?_ ”  
  
“Nothing,” Alan assured him, shaking his head. “It’s fine, we’ll worry about that later. Right now I have something else I’d like to do with you,” he added suggestively, before rolling them both over and pinning Clu beneath him. The feeling of his hot, hard length between them made it very clear what that _something else_ was. “Three weeks is quite a wait.”  
  
A moment mutual anticipation made Clu tense excitedly, and then Alan shifted, and Clu could feel the slick head of his cock between his legs. He spread his thighs and welcomed the sensation of being filled as Alan pushed forward slowly, letting Clu adjust to him just like the first time. When he was seated to the hilt, and the ache of opening to accommodate something that hadn’t seemed quite so big before finally subsided, Clu wrapped his legs around Alan and smiled. “It was a lot longer for me,” he said with a happy sigh.  
  
“I intend to make it up to you,” Alan promised. He pulled back and thrust forward again, drawing a pleased sound from Clu. “Starting now.”  
  
  
_____________  
  
  
  
“Where are you off to so early?”  
  
Sam shrugged into his jacket before pulling the piece of toast he’d snagged from Quorra’s plate out of his mouth to answer, “Work.” He eyed the rest of what she hadn’t finished before wandering off to play on the computer. Tempting, but he didn’t have a lot of time. After creatively “restructuring” more of the board after the Dillinger stunt, and coming up on Alan’s first regularly scheduled vacation to the Grid, Sam found himself inundated with responsibilities.  
  
“Can’t take a day off?” his father asked. “I could use some new clothes. Maybe we can go shopping?”  
  
“Uh, no, sorry. I mean—it’s hard to explain. I just really don’t ever want to set foot in another mall again if I can avoid it.” It was bad enough he’d had to change his cell number. Every time he drove past the damn place all he could think of was buying Quorra a kitten. He wasn’t sure she even wanted one anymore, he just felt guilty for not doing it in the first place. “Quorra can take you. She’s not supposed to drive yet, but that hasn’t stopped her, obviously. Might be nice to get out and walk around where someone isn’t trying to hunt you two down.”  
  
His father nodded a little sadly, and Sam slumped his shoulders. “Dad, I promised Alan.” It was the first big test of his ability to actually do something on his own, he really wanted to prove he could handle it. “Plus there’s Dillinger…”  
  
“He still trying to get past security?”  
  
“Yeah, but I moved security parking up to lot A, and now they actually do what I ask. So they’ve been keeping him out. That scene with Mackey over the hood ornament helped, too.” There was also some talk of a deal with Starbucks, but that was definitely a project for down the road. He figured in a year or two most of the security personnel would probably be ready to forgive him for all the stunts he’d pulled over the years. The rest could be bought with perks. It was a small price to pay for the grief he had caused.  
  
“I just miss jeans,” his father complained quietly to himself.  
  
Sam’s confidence in his choice to leave his father for the day ebbed just a little more, and he found his determination crumbling when faced with the sad slump of the old man’s back and his gloomy frown aimed at the kitchen table. “Dad…”  
  
“It’s alright,” his father said, putting on a very obviously fake smile. “I’ll be fine. I should spend some more time adjusting to things anyway. TV is terrible now.” He said it like he was surprised. Sam didn’t bother reminding him that TV in the 80s wasn’t all that great, either. After spending several lifetimes as a prisoner, he had earned himself a little nostalgia.  
  
“Dad?” The question that had stewed in the back of his mind since their last night in the system suddenly forced its way to the forefront before Sam had a chance to stop it. He found himself speaking without meaning to. “Would you have deleted the other programs to make room for the Isos? If Clu hadn’t done what he did, I mean.”  
  
The kitchen was quiet except for the gentle ticking of the wall clock, and the sounds that filtered through the windows from outside. Sam expected his father to take a long time before he answered; he expected him to chuckle knowingly before launching into some deep, insightful lecture about the nature of artificial life. He expected everything but his father’s kind smile, and his actual answer. “They were my miracle,” he said, as though that was enough.  
  
Sam looked at him for a moment, and then he zipped up his jacket and smiled warmly. “I’ll see you when I get back from work, Dad.”  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading. It's been a while since I started, but I appreciate all the comments and kudos, and all the patience you guys have shown waiting for each update.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Playtime](https://archiveofourown.org/works/3019244) by [Oft](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Oft/pseuds/Oft)




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